


Champions of Dark and Light

by Smokeycut



Series: Champions [2]
Category: Mortal Kombat (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Multi, ignores MK11, transgender character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 08:11:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20991668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smokeycut/pseuds/Smokeycut
Summary: Five years after Shinnok's defeat, Cassandra Cage and her team are working for the Special Force's new Outerworld Investigative Agency division. Trouble is stirring in the realms. Between the civil war in Outworld, growing tensions between Orderrealm and Chaosrealm, a deafening silence from the Netherrealm, and increasing aggression from Raiden, it feels as though the realms will soon break out into a full blown war.It's up to Earth's champion to stem the tide.





	1. Prelude To A Storm

Cassandra Cage crossed her arms in front of her chest and chewed at the inside of her lip. Normally, she’d be more than excited to see a new realm. Seido had, after all, been on her list of places to visit before she died. But when the time came to finally witness the realm of order and stability, she felt like she was a world away. 

They were standing inside of a large, golden dome, which sat atop a landmass that hung suspended in the air over a seemingly endless ocean of green. The walls of the dome were filled with intricate carvings, made up of sharp angles and long ruts. The center, set lower into the ground, past a short series of steps and surrounded by eight seats, placed equal spaces apart from one another, was a round dais. The dais was, at the moment, empty and waiting. But the seats were occupied by eight nearly identical figures. 

They wore full suits of beetle-like armor, made of black and gold metals, with helmets that covered the faces of their wearers. The only thing that set them apart were the crests on the flags they wore on their shoulders. 

“Sorry we’re late, everyone,” Jin said as he made his way down the steps. Cassie couldn’t see beneath the Seidans’ helmets, but she had a good feeling that they were scowling. Or at least hemming and hawing. 

“Do you have an excuse for your lateness?” One of the figures asked sharply enough to make Jacqui wince. 

“We got held up by your portal customs guys,” Takeda said, his own tone just as razor sharp as the armored woman’s. Jacqui touched her fingertips to his bare elbow, and his scowl lessened just slightly at the warm sensation.

“You should have allotted yourselves more time.”

“Note taken,” He muttered under his breath. 

“We express our deepest apologies, governors of Seido,” Jin said in the voice that he reserved for these diplomatic missions, all formal and humble and entirely false. He bowed with one arm held behind his back, and gave the others a look until they repeated his gesture. It seemed to be enough to smooth things over, at least for the time being, as the eight faceless figures stopped shifting uncomfortably in their seats. 

One of the Seidans gestured to the dais with one hand, and they exchanged looks between themselves. There was only enough space for two of them to stand, so Cassie and Jin shared a nod and took it upon themselves to speak to the governors. The others, after a brief nod from Cassie, posted themselves at the room’s twin entrances, standing beside guards who were dressed similarly to the governors.

“You are here on behalf of Earthrealm, correct?” One governor asked. 

“We are,” Jin said. “We were chosen by Raiden himself to represent our realm.”

“You are here to discuss the matter of an allyship between our realms?” Another asked. 

“Yes,” Cassie said. “Earthrealm has suffered three invasions in the time since we’ve discovered the existence of other realms, and next time we’d like to have someone we can turn to to lend us a hand. In exchange, we’re more than willing to do the same for our allies.”

“Seido has not suffered invasion in a millennia. We have remained decidedly neutral in inter-realm matters. Why should that policy change?”

“We’re aware that you’ve had problems with Chaosrealm in the past. If you cover our backs against Outworld and the Netherrealm, we’ll do the same for you against Chaosrealm.”

The room fell eerily silent, and Cassie wondered just how badly she had chosen her words. One governor reached up to his face, and removed his helmet slowly. The face beneath it was heavily lined and weathered with age and experience. Blank white eyes, set against deep brown skin, stared right through her and sent a chill down her spine. His hair was long and white, and tied into a bun on the back of his head. He placed his helmet in his lap and set his fingers against the slit through which he had been looking just a moment before.

“The realm of chaos is no simple _problem_, earthrealmer. They are a blight upon the realms, and their realm must know order. Until that day, no realm shall be safe. If Earthrealm and Seido are to be allies, the first order of business would be to _conquer_ that deviant realm and teach its people obedience.”

If the room had been tense before, it was ten times so now. Jin gave Cassie a worried look, and the squad leader suppressed a shudder. The governor’s words were all too similar to ones she had been hearing nonstop at home for the past five years. Between the similar rhetoric and the silver hair, she found herself wondering if this man was Raiden in disguise. But the Seidans were waiting for a response, and she had to give them one. 

“We can’t make any promises right now, but… If you’d let us take your request back home to our superiors for consideration, we’ll get back to you on that.”

The helmetless governer nodded. “The next time you come to Seido, we will discuss a formal allyship between our peoples, as you have requested. But know this: the suppression of chaos is our sole demand. It is also an urgent one. Our deity of moonlight shall be in attendance. Bring your deity of lightning.”

“You got it,” Cassie sighed. She felt a gigantic weight drop onto her shoulders, joining a hundred more that had been wearing her down throughout the weeks and months leading up to this moment. 

“You may return to the portal gate,” The Seidan said as he stood from his seat. The others followed suit, and turned on a dime to make their way to the exits. 

Cassie dropped her shoulders and let out a heavy sigh as Jin clapped her on the back. She watched as Jacqui and Takeda talked by one of the exits, and as Frost eyed the Seidan assembly with a heavy degree of suspicion at the other. 

“C’mon, boss, let’s get going,” Jin said, at the final peaceful moment before all hell broke loose.

It began with an explosion of rock and metal. 

The dome caved inwards with a horrible wrenching sound, and then burst. Dozens upon dozens of sharp, jagged stones tore through the air and into the ground around the dome’s occupants. Cassie threw her arms over her head and dropped beneath the dais as cover, with Jin following behind her. 

The archer fired an arrow up through the hole in the dome, and the volley of stone halted for a brief moment. Brief enough, at least, for the five humans to converge and prepare themselves for what was coming. 

“Jin, do you have eyes on it?” Cassie asked as she drew her pistols from their holsters. “And can you tell us what the fuck _it_ even is?”

The answer came more quickly than she realized. With a heavy crunch, a gigantic figure cloaked all in brown dropped from the ceiling and onto the floor, cracking the ground where he landed. His heels dug into the granite of the floor, and his head snapped in the direction of the Seidan governors. 

With a simple gesture, as though he was miming a javelin toss, the mountain of a man hurled a spike of granite at the assembly, and skewered one of the armored individuals. They dropped to their knees and sagged, while their blood pooled onto the floor around them. 

An upward swing up his arm brought a wall of stone up around him just in time to block another of Kung Jin’s arrows. A heavy two fisted smash shattered that wall and sent more shards in their direction as a counter attack. 

And then two more sets of feet landed on the floor near the geokinetic assassin. 

“Fuckshit,” Cassie muttered. “Alright, we do this in pairs. Jacqui and Takeda, you take rocky. Jin, you’re with me. Frost…”

“She’s already in the thick of it,” Jacqui said.

“Of course she is,” Cassie sighed. She rolled her neck, then vaulted over the dais and leveled her guns at one of the new targets, a woman holding a katana in each hand. She gripped her gun for a tense moment, urging her green energy to flow into the chambered bullet, before she pulled the trigger and sent it flying through the woman’s calf. 

As the woman fell to her knee, Frost slid along the floor on a sled of ice and hurled a frozen blade in the direction of the geokinetic. He shrugged off the first one, and the second, and the third, but by that point the junior cryomancer had closed to distance between them and was driving a fist into his stomach. 

The third assailant, a man with dark hair and a brown vest, threw a grappling hook in the direction of the Seidans, who were now guarding one another in a cluster, and he managed to snag one’s leg. He pulled her away from her fellows, and towards the swordswoman. She drove a blade into the Seidan woman’s chest, then staggered to her feet and wrenched her sword free. 

“Anyone know who these guys are?!” Takeda shouted out from his end of the makeshift arena. He shot a spear from his wrist and managed to land it firmly in the back of the man with the rope, then pulled him closer with an all too familiar catchphrase of his mentor’s. 

Jacqui followed the setup with a blast of energy from her gauntlets, which sent the man skittering along the floor. He groaned and rolled over onto his back, but it didn’t look like he was in any state to pick himself up and reenter the fight. Frost, however, was having considerably less luck with her own foe.

“I know you,” Frost seethed. Her breath formed a cool fog in the air, only to be stolen from her when her opponent grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her to the ground, face first. She came up with blood in her mouth, and an icy knife in her hand, which she drove into his side with a roar. 

“They’re Black Dragon,” Cassie explained as she engaged in close quarters combat with the woman, Tasia. She recognized them from her mother’s stories, as well as an unfortunate incident from her teenaged years. A charged fist collided with Tasia’s jaw, eliciting a notable _crack_.

“Shit!” Tasia cried out. She swiped with her blades in an attempt to cleave Cassie’s arms from her torso, but a sweep from Kung Jin’s bow brought her down onto her back. Within a second, she found herself nose-to-tip with an arrowhead, with Jin’s foot placed firmly on her chest to hold her in place. 

“How’s it going with the big guy?!” Jacqui called out. A quick look in Frost’s direction showed that their newest member wasn’t faring quite as well as she had hoped. 

Tremor’s knee smashed into her sternum and sent her into the air for a brief, painful moment, before she fell back to the granite floor. “You don’t know me at all, girl,” Tremor rumbled in a voice like an earthquake. “You’re still a slave to the Lin Kuei. I’m _free_.”

“You’re a fool for leaving,” Frost spat. Her blood flecked his boot as it dribbled from her lips. The geokinetic giant smiled beneath his mask and uppercutted the air, prompting a pillar to rise up beneath Frost and launch her into the air. He reached out to grab her foot, but before he could make contact, a bullet flew through his open hand and splattered the floor with his blood. 

“_Children_,” Tremor grunted in frustration. He held out his hands with palms facing upwards, but before he could move the earth in another attack, Takeda’s spear pierced his shoulder and pulled him into a glowing uppercut from Cassandra. When he landed on the ground, Frost threw a sheet of ice over his body, cementing him in place for the time being. 

“We prefer the term “millennials”, thank you very much,” Cassie snarked with a roll of her eyes as she strolled past Tremor’s frozen body. She approached the Seidans and her face fell at the sight of the two who had been slaughtered. Their beetle-shaped armor hadn’t done nearly enough to protect them from the Black Dragon assault. 

“Are you all okay?” She asked, looking at the tallest of the remaining Seidans. When he spoke, she knew from the sound of him that it was the one who reminded her of Raiden.

“Riko and Anno are dead,” He said in a voice that was clearly straining against a growing rage. He clenched his fists as the other five governors removed the helmets of the deceased. “We will hold a ceremony in their honor tomorrow night. In the meantime, we will apprehend the terrorists and deliver them to the nearest penal colony.”

“They’re humans, that puts them under OIA jurisdiction,” Jacqui told him. 

“They were Seidan politicians, murdered on Seidan soil,” The man said, glaring through his helmet’s visor at Jacqui and speaking with thinly veiled contempt at her desire to take the Black Dragons back to Earthrealm. 

“Look, it’s okay, okay?” Cassie said, stepping between her best friend and the enraged governor. “You guys can have them. We’ll tell our superiors that there are three more dragons they don’t have to worry about. But in the meantime, do you have any idea why they attacked you?”

“It was Chaosrealm,” He said. It wasn’t a theory. It was a statement of fact. Cassie knew better than to debate the point. If he said they were hired by chaosrealmers, then that was the only answer she’d get. 

“Okay. Thank you for your time, governor.” He nodded stiffly, and then knelt beside one of his fallen friends and laid a hand over her face. As Cassie walked away from him, she could hear the man saying a short prayer. Her heart dropped in her chest, and she shuddered slightly. It felt wrong to just leave like this, without staying to attend a funeral or even discuss the matter any further. But they had to get going, or people back home would assume the worst. It didn’t make the taste of the matter any less bitter, though. 

The five agents filtered out of the dome and into the sunlit outside, where more islands, just like the one they stood on now, drifted over the sea like clouds. Frost had a few tears in her Lin Kuei garb, as well as a busted lip and a slight limp in her step. She held onto her likely cracked ribs and groaned as they came to stop on the steps leading up to the building. 

“That was a total fucking shitshow,” Their team leader muttered, more to herself than to them. 

“We couldn’t have known the Black Dragon were contracted to assassinate those guys,” Jacqui argued. 

“Still, we should have kept a better lookout. I should have had you and Frost cover the outside while Takeda, Jin and I went in to talk. There’s practically no chance of them allying with us at this point,” Cassie groaned. She held a hand to her forehead and sighed. “And now two people are dead, and we’re just supposed to go home like it was another day on the job.”

“People die in our line of work,” Frost said coldly. “Don’t like it, you can always quit and run back home to Malibu.”

“Shut the fuck up, Kelly.”

“That’s not even my name, Cage.”

Cassie smiled ruefully. It had become something of a game, in the two years since Grandmaster Sub-Zero sent Frost to join their unit as a Lin Kuei liaison. Cassie would guess at various names, only for Frost to deny the accuracy of her most recent assumption. But this time the game didn’t do anything to lighten the mood, and Cassie dropped it without a word. She shook her head and let out another breath.

“We should get going,” Jacqui said, breaking the growing silence. She put a hand on Takeda’s shoulder and he nodded slightly before starting towards the island where the portal was located. 

The others all silently agreed to not mention the fact that there were tears in Takeda’s eyes.

========================================================================

The Jinsei chamber was still, and it was silent, save for the sounds of quiet footsteps. A deep electric thrum began, and crimson lightning crackled in the palm of one man’s hand. No, not one man’s. One _god’s_ hand.

He stared into the Jinsei, the flowing blue lifeblood of the earth itself, and his expression hardened. He recalled the first time he brought two human boys into this chamber. They had been so excited, so eager to see the mythical blood of their realm. When they finally saw it, they were transfixed. It was like looking into the core of creation itself. Watching life flow was a sight that so few of humankind had witnessed, and it was an experience that none forgot. 

Those two boys were like sons to him. Now they were dead. Soon, another of his followers would pass. 

No, not soon. He watched as a bubble rose to the surface of the Jinsei, and popped. He closed his eyes, and he felt that strand of connection break. A soul had departed for the heavens, and unlike when his children had been killed, Raiden was not there to witness this most recent of passings. Perhaps a younger, more foolish god would feel upset at that. Raiden, however, was no longer a fool. He was wise beyond belief, and he understood that one human’s life mattered little in the grand scheme of creation. A new life would enter the world, and replace that thread which had been severed. A spark of creation in Japan. A member of the Shirai Ryu had given birth.

How appropriate. 

A portal was opening elsewhere on Earthrealm, and his most recent proteges were traveling through it. He was connected to his realm, as the storms were tied to the clouds. He could feel these things. These rumblings of magic and transportation.

And now, he thought, it was his duty to inform them of this supposedly tragic loss of life. There were other, more important matters to attend to, but there were duties and protocols and kindnesses that must be performed, and though it tired him greatly, he was not prepared to deal with the all too human backlash he would receive for not being the one to tell them.

He exited the chamber and was met by stormy skies and rolling thunder. Rain beat down upon his weathered face and, with a raised arm, he summoned a bolt of lightning to his position and vanished as it struck.


	2. Memento Mori

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had this chapter ready to go pretty much as soon as the first one was finished, so I figured I'd post it now instead of waiting a while. That said, the next update prooobably won't be quite as quick lol. Still, I hope you enjoy!

Takeda didn’t take the news well. 

He didn’t say more than a few words at a time to anyone, even Jacqui, in the week leading up to the funeral. It was impossible not to walk on eggshells around him in that time. Nobody knew what to say to him; whether to try and lighten his spirits or to offer sympathies. They each tried what came naturally, but none of them managed to stir any sort of meaningful response from their friend. 

Cassie couldn’t really blame him. If it had been her father, she’d probably be a bit cold too. It still didn’t feel real to her, so how must it feel to him, she wondered. Kenshi had been a part of her life since she was young. Jacqui’s too. Growing up around Special Forces members, and knowing the Shirai Ryu like they did, he was only a few degrees away from family. Now there was just a void in their lives, gouged out by skin cancer that was caught too late. 

The funeral was when the dam broke. 

She stood beside her parents and watched in silence as the ceremony unfolded before them. Kung Jin stood with Masters Kai and Bo Rai Cho, while Frost stood with Grandmaster Sub-Zero. Cassie glanced at her Lin Kuei teammate, expecting to find her agitating at being surrounded by a clan she considered her enemies, in the middle of the Shirai Ryu’s fire garden, but she found that Frost was simply standing still with her hands folded respectfully behind her back. Jacqui stood with Takeda and Grandmaster Hasashi, near the body as it was laid to rest. Kenshi had asked Hanzo, once upon a time, if he could be given a traditional Shirai Ryu burial, and so that was what he would get. 

Takeda held on strongly at first. He kept his chin up high and held back tears, up until the moment that his father’s body was lit ablaze. With Hanzo and Jacqui resting their hands on his shoulders, the sole remaining member of the Takahashi family fell to his knees and sobbed openly as the body burned steadily before him. 

He didn’t deserve this, Cassie thought. Not Takeda. Not the boy who brought so much joy and light into the lives of everyone who knew him. He didn’t deserve to be the one that lost both of his parents at such a young age. 

Her gaze drifted across the crowd as prayers were recited over Kenshi’s remains. Nearly everyone was there that ought to have been. Everyone save for one person. She looked to Lord Fujin, who stood with a stoic face and posture that threatened to break at any moment. His braid blew in the wind, and he folded his hands in front of his lap before bowing his head in respect to the fallen warrior. Grandmaster Hasashi welcomed the god of wind up, and he joined them in their prayers. Cassie wondered, briefly, if Fujin was cause for the gentle breeze. Or perhaps, she realized, he was holding back a storm as best he could, all so that they could hold this funeral without interruption. 

It was a nice service, Cassandra thought. Nice enough. 

But that didn’t smother the anger that she felt towards the person who decided not to attend.

*************************************************************************************************************

Kotal strode through his keep, his footsteps heavy and his fists clenched tightly. He was late; held up by a trivial request from some Outworlder farmer. Already, the matter was fading from his mind. He rounded a corner, and was met by the green-robed form of his most loyal follower and devoted advisor. 

“Reptile,” He noted in a voice as low and rumbling as the deepest tremors Outworld had faced. “Is the rest of the war council convened?”

“Assembled and waiting, Kotal Kahn,” The Zaterran hissed. Though his mouth was hidden behind his jade mask, Kotal had little doubt that Reptile’s expression was gravely serious. The ninja shadowed him, keeping only a pace behind his emperor. 

They entered the chamber, whose doors were already open in expectation of their arrival. At the room’s round central table, which was carved from stone and draped with a cloth woven by some ancient tarkatan tribe, two other figures were already seated. One was clad in deep crimson robes, with mottled skin and eyes that glowed a dull emerald, their face wrapped up in black cloth. The other, a younger, more lively face, with blank yellow eyes and auburn skin. His arms, all six of them, were placed on the rim of the stone table. 

“Ermac. Grum. Is this all I am to expect?” Kotal asked, his voice tense, as he turned to Reptile. “Where are the shokan? Sheeva, or Kintaro? NiaFerra? Why are they not here, despite my call for a meeting?”

Reptile stepped around his frustrated friend, and dragged a nail along the table. His eyes locked with Ermac’s for a moment, before he looked back to Kotal. The poor Zaterran was practically withering under Kotal’s glare.

“...The rider and mount were ambushed by the Edenian resistance last night,” Reptile confessed, after a lengthy pause. He glanced up at Kotal, and saw the Oshtekk’s nostrils flare. “They did not survive.”

The Kahn closed the distance between his position and the table with two long strides, and he placed his fist against its deep grey surface. “Who do I have to blame for this senseless murder?” He asked, voice dangerously low.

“According to onlookers, it was Rain and Nitara,” Grum said plainly. He rested his face against one of six fists, and looked at the Kahn with obvious disinterest in the matter. 

“So the Vampires have thrown in their lot with the resistance,” Kotal muttered beneath his breath. “Who else? _Who else_ betrays me? The Shokans as well? Is _that_ the cause for their absence?!”

“We do not know, Kotal Kahn,” Reptile said. He looked into Kotal’s eyes, hoping, perhaps, that it would quell the man’s outrage. “The Shokan have yet to give reason for their abandonment, only that they _have_ left our side. We can show them, Kotal Kahn, the grave error they have made. I need only your command to mount an assault on Sheeva’s palace.”

Kotal bit his tongue, though he growled deep in his throat all the same. It was as though each and every day his power waned even more. The death of Torr four years ago was expected, as it was nearing time for Ferra’s transformation, and the new mount had found a rider anyways. But from D’vorah’s betrayal onwards, not a year went by in which Kotal did not lose at least one vital supporter. First Erron Black left so that he could return to the Black Dragon, then the Centaurs rescinded their support for Kotal’s regime, followed by the rest of the Kytinn. Now the Shokan were revoking their support as well? All he had left at this point were his own kind and the Outworlders. His empire was anything but united. 

With an animalistic roar, Kotal tore the cloth from the table and threw it on the ground. He seethed heavily as his remaining counsel eyed him with worry. As if to punctuate his furor, Kotal pounded his fists against the table, rocking it on its foundation and cracking a portion of its surface. He let loose a glare that could cow even the most ferocious of Outworld’s beasts, which stopped any of them from attempting to calm his fury.

“How is it that this resistance continues to damage Outworld’s unity when the _madwoman_ they called a _leader_ has been _dead_ for _five years?!_” Kotal growled. It was known that the mere topic of the Edenian resistance enraged the emperor. He had, after all, wiped out the Tarkatans for the crime of aiding them openly. But now, even without Mileena and Shinnok’s amulet, they were still bleeding him like a sickly old man. 

“What allies do we have left?” He asked, voice quiet, hardly more than a whisper. 

“The Katalaans, the Naknadans, the Outworlders… And I,” Reptile said with a determined finality. He would not accept any betrayals from those races, nor any questions of the merits of disloyalty. Outworld needed to remain united, on that he and Kotal were in perfect agreement. 

Kotal sighed, his rage quickly dissipating. “I am fortunate, then, to have the loyalty of the last of the Zaterrans,” He said with a slight nod to Reptile, who bowed in response. Kotal turned his attention to Ermac, who had remained utterly silent throughout the conversation so far. The aging, decaying soul construct rattled slightly as a gasp slipped loose from their lips. 

“We sense… A presence…” They wheezed. Reptile placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder, and steadied the pained former assassin. Their ebbing health had long been a fear of Reptile’s, but it was quickly growing apparent that Ermac’s health was in far too great a decline for them to do anything more than serve the Kahn in an advisory capacity. The last time they had cast a spell was nine months past the present moment, and it was doubtful that they could survive casting another. 

But, as they said, a presence was coming upon them. They simply could not see it. Ermac’s eyes darted around the room, flicking upwards, towards the ceiling, but they saw nothing, and neither did the others. 

“Doddering old fool,” Grum muttered derisively. “Your senility is shameful, as is the lack of power this council holds. Tell me, why _should_ my kind continue to throw our support behind an Oshtekk who nobody else will follow? Why should you command _my_ respect, Kotal?” He asked, staring down Kotal with a thin smile on his lips. 

“Because Outworld _requires_ it if we are to overcome the thunder god’s hostilities,” Reptile hissed. Acid dripped from his mask and onto the floor, burning a trail of shallow indentations into the stone beneath his feet as he stalked ever closer to the being with skin like terracotta. “You may not pledge loyalty to the Kahn, but perhaps your next of kin _will_,” He spat; his venom missing Grum’s skin by a hair. 

“Hold, Reptile,” Kotal said. His voice was still, as if his recent explosion had never occurred at all. Yet Reptile saw his hands twitch, drawing towards the hook and knife at his hips. The Zaterran acquiesced, and took his seat beside Ermac. Kotal circled the table, and came to stand directly beside Grum. He placed a hand on the table, while his other came to rest on his hook. 

“You aim to intimidate me, Kotal?” Grum laughed. “My people are cousins to the Shokan and Tigrar; if you could not control them, what makes you think you could manage that feat with _me?_”

Kotal said nothing. Rather, he silently drew his hook from his belt and held it to Grum’s throat, tip pressed directly against the six armed chieftain's flesh. A cold sneer crept across the Kahn’s face, and his tattoos began to glow from the sunlight that was cast through the window behind him. 

“Do you challenge me?” Kotal simply asked. 

“I do,” Grum answered. 

Kotal’s weapon fell away from Grum, but only for a brief moment before he swung his hand backwards and sliced a thin line across his cheek. The blood spattered across the wall, and Grum let loose a low roar as he fell into a defensive stance. 

Grum dashed forward with four arms outstretched, only to find a hook bursting through his upper right hand, and a knife slicing its way past the fingers of his upper left. Kotal ducked beneath his foe and wrenched the hook free, painting the table with flecks of red. 

Grum retaliated with fists flung blindly, as though he expected brute strength to be enough to overcome a seasoned veteran of war. Grum was young, foolish, and had never seen battle outside of ceremonies and brief skirmishes with Edenian rebels. He didn’t know what _real_ battle was, and he was only just about to realize it. 

Kotal dodged the blows with ease, and when Grum made the mistake of entering the sun’s beam of light, he found his skin searing against the bone. Kotal grinned, and he drove his knife into the upstart’s mouth. Reptile cocked his head at the sight of its tip, which peeked out the back of Grum’s neck, before it was yanked free. 

“I can only hope that your daughter will understand the virtue of obedience,” Kotal told Grum, before slitting the Katalaan’s throat and dropping him to the floor unceremoniously. 

He turned to look at Reptile and Ermac as a pair of Oshtekk guards entered the room, alerted by the commotion. As they took the body away, with a message to alert Grum’s daughter of her new position as chieftain of their people, Kotal finally took his seat at the head of the table. His palms settled onto the cool stone, and one finger traced itself through the path of Grum’s splattered blood, before he looked up and met Reptile’s eyes. 

“I believe you had a report for me,” He said, beginning their meeting in earnest, “about the Edenian resistance’s latest attacks?”

Reptile nodded, as Ermac’s gaze drifted lazily to the window. The Zaterran and the Kahn discussed the matter in great detail, noting civilian casualties, active participants, known allies and sympathizers of the rebels, and suspected camps. Meanwhile, the soul construct merely gripped their eye-shaped amulet and sighed deeply.

“She’s gone again,” They whispered, though Reptile and Kotal paid them no mind. There were more important matters to attend to than some fiction dreamt up by an addled mind, even if that mind belonged to a dear friend. 

*************************************************************************************************************

The breeze was picking up, managing to blow its way through Cassie’s loose mop of hair. She had let her hair down for the service; a rarity for her. She ran a hand under those hanging blonde locks, and she felt the slight prickle of the buzzed sides of her head, and she watched as Jacqui wrapped Takeda up in a hug. 

She overheard Fujin whisper words of understanding to Takeda, with a gentle hand on the shoulder, before the god stepped to the side and allowed the young man to depart with Jacqui and Grandmaster Hasashi. They’d leave him be for the time being, and Cassie had already told Takeda that he’d be given a few days away from Special Forces and OIA duties so that he could process things. Jacqui would spend the time with him while the others held down the fort back at the base. 

“I can’t imagine what it must be like,” She whispered to her father, as he wrapped a heavy arm around her shoulders. 

“It sure as hell ain’t easy,” Sonya admitted from the other side of her. No doubt she was thinking of her own family. She had lost her mother when she was young, with her father and brother following not long after. If anyone could understand what it was like to lose all the family you had, Cassie realized, it was her mother.

Before the conversation could continue any further, Cassie heard her name being called. She looked over in the direction of the voice and, after disentangling herself from her father, she made her way over to Frost. The cryomancer brought her mask down, and the mist from her breath was present even there, in the fire gardens. It was strangely beautiful, Cassie thought; the white fog, falling from Frost’s supple lips, set against the flowers which were so reminiscent of flames, sprouting from the earth. 

“What’s up?” Cassie asked, coming up to stand next to her newest squadmate. She looked away from Frost, however, and instead watched the slowly dispersing crowd. 

“You noticed too, didn’t you?” Frost asked, her voice kept low, almost conspiratorial. Her eyes flitted between various Shirai Ryu, White Lotus and Special Forces attendees, as though one of them was eavesdropping.

“Noticed what?” The question was a formality, and they both knew it. Frost shot her a brief glare, as if to say Cassie didn’t need to adopt such a veneer of innocence. She had noticed. Of course she had. _Everyone_ had noticed, even though they weren’t willing to mention it. Cassie sighed, and nodded. “Yeah, I did. I’m gonna talk to him next time I see him.”

“You better,” Frost huffed. She crossed her arms in front of her blue vest and shook her head. “He has no excuse not to be here. Even _I_ showed.”

Again, Cassie nodded. Frost, despite her worst qualities, had indeed developed enough decency over the past five years to be willing to accompany her master, and her team, to this place, for this reason. If even the Shirai Ryu’s harshest critic was willing to attend Kenshi’s funeral… Why the hell wasn’t Raiden?

Cassie looked to one of the small lamps which hung above the flowers in the garden. Soon, Mister Takahashi’s remains would be sprinkled among the plants, and like those fallen Shirai Ryu before him, he would rejoin the earth he had vowed to protect. She hoped that he had found the afterlife well, whatever it was like. If anyone had earned a peaceful rest, it was Mister Takahashi.

She wiped a tear from her eye with the back of her hand. She hated getting choked up at these things, but she always did. She felt the temperature around her rise as Frost departed with Grandmaster Sub-Zero. She rolled up the sleeves of her suit and sighed as the goosebumps faded from her arms. Or rather, as they refused to do so, in spite of the warmth.

She had a powerful feeling, deep inside, and permeating every part of her. A feeling that told her a storm was on the horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to kudos and comment!


	3. Dark Clouds Rolling In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to Kim Petras' latest album for being my writing partner this chapter. It wound up being longer than my average update, despite only being one scene. Kinda surprised myself there, tbh. Still, I hope you enjoy it!

Cassie sighed, and looked at the map that was laid out in front of her. Projected upwards from the slick, metallic, futuristic looking table was a detailed hologram; shimmering in a gentle, oceanic color were sprawling streets and little pop-up buildings, all encircling a small abbey made of layered stone. Her eyes scanned the nooks and crannies of the projection, honing in on any potential vantage points or weaknesses in the layout of the village. Little gaps between windows and lookout spots were marked and noted by taps of her finger, and she drew a path through the town and towards the abbey that sat in its heart.

“When is a village not a village?” Kung Jin asked from his seated position. He had planted himself firmly on a swiveling chair, and had a knee pulled up to his chest as he too eyed the holographic map. 

“When it’s a rebel camp?” Cassie replied, to a firm nod. She glanced over at Frost, who completed their little study triangle around the projector. The Lin Kuei warrior stared at the map for a few moments longer, before reaching out to pinch and zoom in on the abbey. 

“This doesn’t look like Outworld architecture,” She pointed out. She and Cassie looked to Jin, the resident cultural expert on all things otherworldly, and the Shaolin monk shrugged his shoulders before taking a closer look at the structure. 

“You’re right. And it’s not Edenian either,” He said. He furrowed his brow and clicked his tongue. His most well studied options thrown out, the monk began to rifle through his memories in an attempt to place the vaguely familiar architectural styling. “It looks like… I’m not sure. Not Shokan or Centaur. Maybe… Vampire?”

“I didn’t know Outworld had Vampires,” Cassie muttered. 

“They call themselves the Moroi,” Jin admitted. “They were conquered by Shao Kahn between Zaterra and Edenia. They’ve never been big fans of his regime, or Kotal’s for that matter. Like the Edenians, they’ve always just wanted freedom.”

“So it makes sense that they’d give the resistance a place to hide out in.” Cassie pulled her sunglasses from the neckline of her t-shirt and, after flicking them out, put them on and sat on the edge of the table. “The resistance has been growing in power and scope ever since Mileena’s execution. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve brought in several other entire races by now. Numbers over tactics.”

Cassandra fought back a shudder at the memory of the deposed Kahnum’s death. She had, regrettably, been a front row witness to the act, and even now it haunted her. The kiss. The insects. The burrowing, and the buzzing, and above it all… Her guttural screams of agony as she was devoured from the inside out. That was the moment that got Cassie thinking, that got her doubting. It was a steady path from that awful, disgusting act of brutality to this moment. This examination of a rebel camp. 

The last time that her group had studied a map of an Edenian hideout, it was for the purpose of capturing their leader for Kotal. Now… Now it was different. Plans had changed. Cassie wasn’t willing to stomach supporting a dictatorship anymore, not after the senseless executions and the betrayal that Kotal had enacted. She would never forgive him for joining up with Shinnok and attempting to claim Earthrealm for the fallen elder god. If it hadn’t been for Grandmaster Sub-Zero, Frost and the rest of the Lin Kuei, Kotal likely would have succeeded in his cowardly act. 

Five years, she thought. It had been five years since that day, and Earthrealm’s relationship with Outworld had soured greatly in that time. In breaking the Reiko Accords, Kotal had shown them his true colors. He had revealed to them that the accords never meant a word to him, outside of being a tool to wave around in order to get them to do his dirty work.

“Two weeks,” She told them. Her voice was stern, and brooked no room for dissent; not that Jin or Frost would offer any in the first place. They were in complete agreement with her on this. “Two weeks, and then we go to them with our offer.”

Frost’s head perked up, and Cassie caught the look in an instant. She waved away the projection just as the door opened, and as the others filed on in. Her parents first, followed shortly thereafter by Li Mei. The senior SF operatives took their positions on opposite sides of the table, while Li Mei stood off to the side. It had been years since she and the other refugees took up permanent residence on Earthrealm, but Li Mei did so with the promise that she would continue to aid the SF and OIA when and where she could. It was an advisoral only capacity, at her insistence. She wasn’t much for violence, Cassie figured.

Cassie leaned back against the table and lowered her sunglasses as everyone settled in. She ejected the flash drive containing the map and slipped it into her pocket without any of the senior staff taking note of the action. 

“Where’s Raiden?” Li Mei asked, looking to Cassie. She shrugged in response. 

“He’s normally pretty good about keeping a schedule,” Sonya noted, tapping something into the projector. Cassie moved to the side to give her better access, and looked off, outside the meeting room, and towards the empty hallway beyond. 

She closed her eyes as static filled the air. A deep, sharp breath matched with a low, electric hum. Finally, the air was split by a crack of thunder and a bolt of lightning, which slammed into the ground with deafening force. When Cassie opened her eyes, she found herself looking down the hallway at Raiden, who approached slowly, hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides. His hat was pulled down so it cast a shadow over his face, but she could see his eyes glowing like red sparks, just barely illuminating his heavily lined features.

“Oh. There he is,” Sonya said quietly. She nodded in the thunder god’s direction, but he ignored her, as well as Johnny’s casual greeting, choosing instead to track Cassandra with his gaze as he circled around the table. He came to stop on the other side of it, between Frost and Jin, who both eyed him nervously. 

There was a dangerous air about him these days. There had been ever since the day Cassie defeated Shinnok and repelled his demonic invasion, just as her parents had done before her birth. It was as though, whenever he entered a room, he sucked the light from the air and pulled it into the golden amulet that was fixed to his breast. Shinnok’s amulet. 

“You good, big R?” Johnny asked, clapping Raiden on the back. The god glanced in Johnny’s direction and clicked his teeth, then turned to look at the projection that Sonya had pulled up. 

Whereas the program that her daughter was using displayed layouts of an Outworld village, Sonya’s was a more intricate looking web, matching names and faces to realms, allyships and notable activity. Laid out in bright blue strands of light were figures that were familiar to everyone present. Dead in the center, Earthrealm was represented via a split image of the White Lotus symbol and the Special Forces insignia; the two most forward facing factions of their realm. 

Other realms were shown with other images. Outworld, the stern face of Kotal Kahn. Seido, a beetle-helmeted governor. Chaosrealm, a spiraling stained glass object that Cassie didn’t recognize in the slightest. She thought to herself that she’d have to ask Jin about it later, as he was probably more familiar with it. The Netherrealm, of course, was represented by its new king and queen. Liu Kang and Kitana’s ghastly visages stared at her, looking frighteningly familiar to a few old photographs of her father’s, and yet so much colder and detached. None of the warmth remained that was held by the people captured in those old, weathered polaroids on the walls of her childhood home.

Sonya tapped on the image of Kotal Kahn, and with a gentle _ping_, the web fell away, while his presence overtook the projection. A profile on Outworld was drawn up, as well as a scrolling readout of the Reiko Accords. 

This was the cause for their meeting. While they were seeking a new bond with Seido, the question of the Reiko Accords loomed dangerously over their heads, like a pendulum over a pit. 

“In one month, the Reiko Accords, and our peaceful relationship with Outworld, will reach its endpoint,” Sonya said, gesturing to the cycling document. Raiden nodded, and Johnny blew air out of his mouth slowly as he leaned back against the wall. “We need to establish contact with Kotal Kahn soon if we want to avoid risking another war breaking out between our realms.”

Cassie scoffed, and when all the eyes in the room flitted to her, she shook her head dismissively. “Why bother? Kotal already proved to us that his word doesn’t mean a thing.”

“That was an isolated incident,” Sonya began, only to be cut off at the first chance.

“We would have died if the Lin Kuei hadn’t shown up to stop Kotal’s forces,” Cassie argued. She looked to Jin, and to Frost, searching for backup. Much to her relief, they were more than willing to provide.

“Kotal is a snake,” Frost hissed in a voice as cold as the ice on her hands. “I fought him, right alongside my sifu. He doesn’t give a damn about helping anyone but Outworld.”

“They’re not wrong,” Jin said. He spoke more calmly than Frost, but agitation was still all too present in his tone. He was, quite possibly, the least fond of Kotal out of their group. “I mean, you should see the way he’s running Outworld. Executing people just for- for stealing a loaf of bread!” He exclaimed, still incredulous at the emperor’s brutality all these years later. “I’m not surprised he turned on us, even after we helped him kill Mileena.”

Cassie bit her tongue before she could chime in with her growing belief that the self-proclaimed Kahnum’s capture, and ensuing execution, was a poor decision on their part. She knew full well that that particular opinion wouldn’t be exactly welcome in present company. Instead, she looked to Johnny in the hopes that her father would back up the squad’s opinion on the matter.

“Cass…” Johnny scratched the back of his head as he picked through his mind for the right words to use. She kicked herself internally. Of course it couldn’t be so easy. “I’m not saying we should trust Kotal completely, not after what he pulled with Shinnok, but I don’t think we can just throw away this peace treaty. I lived through one war with Outworld. We don’t need another.”

Cassie looked at her father, at the weariness etched across his face, and her expression softened a touch. She couldn’t blame him for his outlook, his fears. How many friends had he lost in that war, exactly? A dozen? Twice as many? No doubt he was afraid of losing what few he had left alive. 

“I am in agreement,” Li Mei said. She shook her head ruefully, and folded her hands in her lap. “Outworld has never been a _peaceful_ place. We have endured centuries upon centuries of war and chaos under Shao Kahn, and my parents faced the same oppression under the boot of Onaga Kahn before him. Things aren’t _good_ under Kotal, but… If people do not break his laws, then they have nothing to fear. If only the Edenians could accept that as well, and stop tearing our realm apart…”

“But it’s not their realm,” Cassie said without thinking. Li Mei tilted her head, and Cassie fought back against a nervous laugh. “Look, I’m just saying, people shouldn’t live under the constant threat of execution, okay? We shouldn’t be supporting that kind of regime, especially not if they’re going to stab _us_ in the back the first chance they get!”

“And what alternative would you prefer?” Li Mei asked sharply. Her nails dug into her pants leg, driven by frustration and memories of Shao’s time as emperor. “Another open war? Over twenty years of peace thrown away like they never existed?”

“Nobody here wants war, okay?” Jin shot back, like an arrow from his quiver. “We just understand that, unless we stand up for ourselves, the Reiko Accords wouldn’t even matter.”

“So what do we want to do, then?” Cassie asked, after a pregnant pause filled the space between them. She looked about the room, from person to person, and found that they were all torn. Answers weren’t coming easy. Only Raiden stood without expression. The lightning that arced across his body seemed to grow hotter, burning the air itself as he stared into Kotal’s holographically projected image.

“Kotal Kahn is not to be trusted,” The thunder god spat. His first words of the day, the first words that Cassie had heard out of him in weeks, if not months, and as much as she agreed with the words themselves, she found herself put off by the implied threat behind them. Where she was being cautious, Raiden was paving a warpath. 

“Well, any advice from the gods would be greatly appreciated,” Sonya said under her breath. She pressed a hand to the table and sighed. She didn’t have any definitive answers herself. She knew Cassie had a point, but like her ex husband, she wasn’t exactly champing at the bit to risk sparking another conflict between realms. The past five years, like the decades before Shinnok’s attack, had been blissfully quiet. Peaceful, even. The Reiko Accords coming to an end was a very real fear of hers. And they only had a scant four weeks to renew the accords. It was a daunting situation, to be sure.

Raiden thinned his eyes and glanced to his side, at the general, before looking back to the projection. Or rather, as Cassie felt his gaze pierce right through her chest, back to _her_. She sighed, and rubbed her arm. Ever since the fight with Shinnok, ever since she displayed the full depths of her power, ever since Raiden’s new dark outlook on the world, the thunder god had begun to view her as more of a weapon than a protege. It made her skin crawl, being looked at as though she were just a tool. Another amulet for him to weild. 

“Earthrealm will not renew the Reiko Accords,” Raiden said. Sonya looked at him in shock, and the others followed suit. 

“But-” Li Mei began, only to be silenced by Raiden’s tempestuous glare. She faltered, casting her eyes away and withering under the intensity of the angered god. 

“I shall deal with Kotal Kahn myself. The other gods and I will not allow war to reach Earthrealm again. No matter the costs, I will ensure that no harm comes to this realm, or to its people. Focus on other matters. This one will be handled at my discretion.”

He turned on his heel and began to walk away without another word. Those present were left reeling in stunned silence, save for Cassandra. She vaulted over the table and began stalking after Raiden, through the hall and out into the sunlit outdoors. 

The steel bunker doors slid shut behind her as she came to the forest on the surface; a new location for the OIA taskforce to meet after the refugee camp was shuttered four years ago. With Li Mei and her people placed in more permanent homes, they had no need for it. And with the Shirai Ryu’s attack on the facility, the Special Forces had taken it upon themselves to invest in more secure locations for its operatives to meet. 

Cassie marched past slender, ashy birch trees and went to grab the towering god by the shoulder, only for him to whirl around and stare daggers at her. Glowing, crackling red daggers, at that. They tore through her, body and soul alike, like a bolt of lightning cast from his very fingers. She stopped in her tracks, took a step back, and had to remind herself to _breathe_. 

“What is it?” Raiden rumbled. His voice was like rolling thunder, only ten times more imposing. He stood straight, stiffly, and yet his arms and hands were curled as though he was ready for battle. Cassie had to force her eyes back up to his face, and even then it was like staring down the barrel of a gun. She just prayed that it wasn’t loaded. 

“I wanted to talk,” She said simply. Now that she said it, however, it felt so… Pedestrian. Not nearly important enough for Raiden to pay attention. But it _was_ important, she reminded herself. And so she stood her ground, with clenched fists and a puffed up chest, in the hopes that he wouldn’t just vanish and leave her with no answers.

“Speak your mind, Cassandra Cage,” He said. The agitation in his tone seemed to subside, ever so slightly. If she pretended the lightning coursing through his body was blue instead of red, and that he was still wearing that old straw hat instead of the steel one that adorned his head, he almost looked like his old self again. Almost. 

“Mister Takahashi’s funeral was yesterday.”

The words left her mouth, and silence followed them. Raiden said nothing, not right away. The wind whistled and the leaves above them rustled gently, but the air, paradoxically, seemed to hang still. 

“I am aware,” Raiden said, after what felt like eons, but was only half a minute at most. 

“You weren’t there,” Cassie added, in the vain hope that it would elicit some sort of regret or condolences from the distant god. She was foolish to hope.

“I had… Other matters to attend to.” He spoke tersely, and she could feel the rumbling storm begin to brew inside of him again. The air grew thick with static and heat. Her heart began to race. But instead of fear, or trepidation, she felt that same rage begin to bubble up inside her. After five years of dealing with the same from Raiden, she was all too eager to let it out. 

“Bullshit.”

“Tt,” Raiden clicked his teeth and turned away from her. Cassie, without thinking, grabbed his shoulder and forced him to keep looking. 

“You’re a god. You could have found the time,” She insisted. The accusation was anything but untruthful. They both knew it. Whether he was willing to accept that truth was another matter entirely.

“I have more important things to do than attend a funeral. Even if Takahashi Kenshi was a good man.”

Cassie clenched her fists until her nails were embedded in the pale flesh of her palms, and screwed her eyes shut tight. She could feel the glow flowing through her body, as if it was urging her to lash out at him further. She pushed it back down, pressed it to ebb back inside the core of her being, but her anger was still present. It would not subside so quickly. Her thoughts turned back to her father, inside the bunker, and the fear that he felt at the thought of another war with Outworld. A war that, seemingly, Raiden was all too willing to invite. 

“That’s funny. My parents told me about how, after the war with Outworld, you were at _every_ funeral,” She said, seething with growing rage. She glared at him furiously, and his nostrils flared in response. She flashed back to the polaroids that decorated the hallways of her father’s home. The sometimes smiling, sometimes tired, yet always hopeful faces. “Stryker, Kabal, Liu Kang and Kung Lao… Even for the people who didn’t have anyone to bury them, like Smoke or Princess Kitana. Dad said that _you_ buried them, and gave them all a final resting place. If you could make time for them... Why couldn’t you make time for Mister Takahashi?”

“Do not dance around your intent, Cassandra Cage,” Raiden growled fiercely. A stray arc of lightning dug its way into the dirt beneath his feet, singing it black. “Speak plainly, and make your accusation.”

Cassie took a breath, and bounced on the balls of her feet. She nodded slightly. “Alright, fine. You want me to talk straight with you, I will,” She promised. She uncapped her rage, and beckoned it to pour out all at once. 

“Why don’t you care anymore? What made you so _fucking_ distant that you couldn’t even go to the funeral of someone who called you his friend?!”

Her head snapped to the side, and a loud _crack_ rang out through the forest. Birds fled from their nests, and it was only after Cassie stopped seeing white, only after she raised a trembling hand to her reddened cheek, only after she blinked away tears… Only then was it that she realized Raiden had struck her with the back of his hand. 

She looked back to him with tears pricking at her vision, and through those bleary eyes she saw that the sky had grown dark. Storm clouds had rolled in, and thunder was roaring in the distance. 

“I do not need a _human_ to lecture me on duty or friendship. My time is far too valuable for trivial matters such as ceremonies and burials. If I had been more diligent in the past, perhaps Earthrealm’s champions would still walk among us, rather than through the deepest bowels of _hell_.”

“And you think declaring war on Outworld is gonna fix all that?” Cassie asked, fighting through sobs that threatened to wrack her body. The shock was still too much, and it was a wonder she was capable of arguing back. “What the fuck _happened_ to you, Raiden?!” She cried out in as much grief as pain. 

He turned away from her again, and this time Cassandra found herself unwilling to stop him. Whether it was fear or something else, she didn’t know. But try as she might, she simply couldn’t fight him.

“I learned from my mistakes,” He said in a low, terrifying voice. A voice that was eerily familiar to her, and not in that it reminded her of the god she once knew and looked up to. 

“Yeah?” She said quietly. She didn’t know if he could hear her, but she knew the words needed to be said. “Well so have I. If you _do_ go to war with Outworld, find another champion. I won’t fight for you anymore.”

As he vanished in a flash of lightning, Cassie realized who he reminded her of. He reminded her of Shinnok.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to kudos and comment! I love hearing readers' thoughts!


	4. I Long For Your Return (My Heart)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the hiatus on this fic! I honestly don’t know what happened. Hopefully any future delays won’t last quite so long.

The wound still stung as though it was fresh. 

She ran her hands through the water and let the cool liquid lap at her hot skin, and it soothed her for a time, but she still felt the aching in her heart. Outworld’s winged beasts flew overhead, and she heard one call to its flock as it rejoined the herd on their trek north. A small smile graced her lips as she thought of how nice it would be to never see those monsters again. She had spent so much of her life without seeing home, without seeing the beautiful little creatures that were native to Edenia. It would be good to hold a ractheen in her hand again. To feed it nibbles of grain and watch it hide away in a tree afterwards, as she had done as a child. 

That was before she watched the realm’s lush green forests merge with Outworld’s desolate violet plains from between her mother’s gentle fingers. Before she watched as her parents, mother and father both, had pikes driven into their bodies by Outworld soldiers. Before she learned that they still did not know peace, even now, for their souls had been stolen and used by the Kahn for his monstrous experiments. 

She laughed wryly to herself. Did she really have any room to think such a thing? After all, she was mourning one of those experiments now. She was offering a prayer to Argus and Delia that her love had found her way to the heavens safely. 

Rain would call her foolish for still worshipping dead gods. She would call him foolish for not. Then, as always, they would have to set their squabbling aside in favor of dealing with the civil war they now found themselves taking ground in. With Earthrealm staying out of things, and with Ko’atal’s followers dwindling by the day, she could more than believe that her prayers were being heard. 

A sigh escaped from Tanya’s lips as she withdrew her hands from the water. They were her mother’s hands. Even ten thousand years later, she knew that they were. She remembered the way the sun played off of her mother’s dark skin, and the way her father claimed that she so resembled the woman who had given birth to her, and who had loved her so deeply that she gave her life to protect her. Tanya flicked the water from her hands and stood slowly from the riverbank. The wind caught her hair in a gentle breeze and carried it aloft. It had grown several inches longer since Mileena’s murder. Long enough now to reach past her shoulders, and tickle the tops of her arms. 

“Five years to the day,” She whispered to the wind, as her lips twitched, uncontrollable and unbidden, into a soft, sorrowful smile. “I still miss you, Mileena Kahnum. I always shall.”

“Tanya!” Rain’s voice boomed like a clap of nighttime thunder. She stood still for a moment more, before turning from the river and looking back at the village they had called home for the past few weeks. Rain, her divine co-commander in the rebellion, stood against a frail, slowly dying tree with arms crossed in front of his bare chest. His veil still covered his mouth, and his pants his legs, but the violet shawl that typically adorned his chest was nowhere to be found. 

She had assumed he’d at least dress himself fully after the night they had just had.

“What do you want?” She asked sharply, not even bothering to look him in the eye as she walked past his position and into the small, decrepit town’s square. 

“She’s back.”

“Already?” Tanya’s gaze flicked to the chapel, all worn down and abused by time and weather in equal measure. A symbol was etched into the space above its open doorway; a carving that looked like a bull’s horns, or perhaps a pair of inverted fangs, jutting out from a crescent moon shape. In the doorway stood the leather winged, dark haired vision of a woman that was Nitara. Yet she wasn’t the person Rain spoke of. 

Tanya walked up the steps to the chapel slowly, followed shortly thereafter by Rain. The vampiress nodded to them and extended her arm, beckoning the pair to enter her parish. Inside, seemingly, they were alone. Just the three of them, standing in a small wooden room, where old and faded cushions were laid about on the floor and a shard of stained glass hung above their heads, dangling from a wire. 

What seemed to be the truth, however, was not the actual fact of the matter. The space at the far end of the chapel seemed to distort for a moment, as though light was bending and warping around something, or someone. But then she came into focus, with her skin returning to its natural silvery color, and her turquoise robes coming clear. 

“Khameleon,” Tanya cooed with a satisfied grin. It was a cold, false affectation; an expression crafted with the express purpose of remaining in control of any situation, no matter what the Edenian mage was truly feeling. “What brings you back so early?”

“She was _supposed_ to spy on the Kahn for another week,” Rain grunted. His eyes thinned, and he glared at the spot where the Saurian stood. She didn’t sit still for long, however. 

Khameleon crept closer to them, her neck swaying like a snake’s as she approached. A long hood covered most of her head, but uncovered by hood and veil was a pair of yellow eyes with slit pupils, and a glimpse of shimmering scaly skin. Hanging from her hip, rather than a blade, was a rolled-up map, which she took in one hand and offered to Tanya, who suspected that the spy was smirking beneath her veil. 

“One week was all I needed to survey the new guard placements in the capitol,” Khameleon said quietly, but confidently. What she lacked in volume and force, she more than made up for in skill; shown perfectly by the highly detailed map that Tanya unfurled and examined with great interest. “I would have stayed longer, but I took the time to listen in on one of Kotal’s meetings.”

“You did _what?_” Rain scowled beneath his own veil. “You could have been caught!”

“Clearly she wasn’t,” Nitara snarked, resting an arm on Khameleon’s shoulder and baring a fang as she smirked. 

“The construct was far too addled to warn them of my presence,” Khameleon whispered. 

“Nevermind that…” A voice called out from the doorway. All four of the rebels inside turned, shaken to their core by the familiar sound, which not one of them had ever expected to hear again. They stared, frozen in shock as the interloper continued, stepping ever closer with a determined look in their eyes. “What did you _learn?_

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Cassie turned her cheek to the light that bounced off the city, glowing softly in the night. The rain drummed down on the sidewalk in a steady beat, pattering away while the twenty something hid beneath an awning, with her drab olive coat pulled tight around her. It had been just over a week since the meeting, since her argument with Raiden in the woods. Still, his words rang out, repeating endlessly, in her mind. 

It scared her, the way he looked at the world now. She hadn’t seen him since that day, but she was dreading it. She found herself wondering, would another fight occur the next time they exchanged words? Would he strike her again? Would she hit him back? Would the violence simply grow worse and worse, more and more bitter, with every additional day?

A hand touched her shoulder, and even through the heavy fabric of her coat, she could feel the slight sting of cold. The chill, transferred from one body to another. She turned her head slightly, and forced her lips into the shape of a smile, as Frost came up beside her. 

“The hell are you crying about?” The white-haired young woman asked, in a voice as cold as the aura she carried with her.

“Huh?” Cassie brought a finger to her eyes, but despite the rain beating down on the street, it came away dry. 

“Jeez. I was kidding. ” Frost said with a roll of her eyes. Even still, they returned to Cassie, and she felt a small pang of sympathy in her cold, cold heart. “You okay?” She forced herself to say. 

Cassie shrugged, and kept her eyes on the bustling, rain soaked city street. “Fucked if I know. I just keep thinking about Raiden.”

“Yeah, the hell happened there?” 

“Who knows,” Cassie said with a short, bitter laugh. “After the Shinnok thing, he just wasn’t the same anymore. He… Jesus fuck, he _scares_ me! I’m fucking _terrified_ of being around him now.”

Frost let out a long, foggy breath. The vapor mixed with the air and dispersed slowly as she shook her head. “Look, you wanna get outta here? You’re freezing. I can tell.”

Cassie gave the butch in blue flannel a glance, and cocked an eyebrow. “You do realize I’m _always_ freezing around you, right? You take cold hands to a whole ‘nother level.”

Frost’s lip curled into a small sneer, and from that to a cruel grin. “Funny,” She said, “You seemed just fine with my cold hands when you-“

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence!”

Frost laughed, and after a moment so did Cassie. She shook her head and smiled softly as the cryomancer bumped her shoulder. 

“So, you wanna get outta here or what, princess?”

“Yeah, alright. Order pizza on the way back to my apartment?”

“Sure. Why not.”

Cassie hailed a cab, and as they rumbled gently through the winding city streets in the backseat, her fingers entwined themselves with those of the Lin Kuei beside her. Cold hands, yes, but she didn’t mind. Not so long as they took her mind off of the thunder god who often clouded her thoughts of late. 

And she didn’t mind the company.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Fujin looked out, over the mountain range, as the storm clouds came together overhead. Long grey locks of hair hung over his shoulder in a loosely bound braid, while deep brown hands rested on his knees, palms facing the sky, as he meditated. 

Soft blades of grass tickled his bare feet, and a gentle, ever present breeze brushed against his chest and shoulders. Normally, those simple sensations would bring a peaceful bliss to the god of wind. This night, however, the brewing storm above was one that brought a feeling of dread, rather than hope. 

A drop of rain splashed against his open palm, and a sad smile crossed his lips. 

“I miss you, brother. You, and all the others,” He whispered to the winds. He knew that there was no way for his message to reach its intended recipient. When a god died, there was no place for them in the heavens. They simply... ceased to be.

In his more wistful moments, he liked to think that their spirits could find new life in human form, but he knew that it was only a dream. 

Gods of fire, earth and water had once been his family. Now, they were but memories. Taken from this world by the sickly white hands of death himself, decades ago. Casualties of war, to use a term coined by the denizens of Earthrealm. He didn’t care for that term. They were pieces of his heart, and they loved humanity just as much as he did. Now, all the family he had left was his brother, his twin.

“You meditate, Fujin? Instead of taking action?”

Raiden’s harsh words were like the thunder that split the sky, disrupting the comforting winds that Fujin had conjured. The storm coalesced and began in ernest, with black skies roaring in his ears.

“I do meditate brother. I recall a time, not long ago, when you would join me. Would you care to?”

Raiden stood behind his twin, arms crossed in front of his armored chest, his posture stiff and unflinching. His thin lips twitched in frustration, and his fingers dug into the fabric of his black tunic. 

“I have little time for frivolities. If we are to protect Earthrealm-“

“We must first _understand_ Earthrealm,” Said Fujin. Even still, his voice was gentle, yet commanding of attention. 

“Tch,” Raiden sneered and turned away from his brother. “I understand mortals all too well. They are feeble, arrogant, _foolish_ creatures. If not for my steadfast protection, surely they would have been subjugated long ago.”

“Be mindful of your own shortcomings, Raiden,” Fujin said softly, looking after his brother. “We’re not too different from them, in our ways.”

Thunder clapped over his words of wisdom, and Fujin found himself meditating by his lonesome once more. Yes, he thought to himself, they weren’t too different at all. 

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Her lips curled into a curious smile.

“What did you _learn?_” She asked, allowing the question to hang from her tongue like the sweetest honey. 

Tanya, graceful Tanya, gasped sharply and grabbed Rain by the wrist to steady herself, or perhaps to simply retain some assurance that she was not drifting through the realm of dreams. Rain’s eyes widened, simply baffled. Nitara tilted her head, a finger tracing her jawline as a curious light shone in her eyes. Khameleon bowed before her. She liked that. 

“By the elder gods,” Tanya whispered, voice fragile as sugar glass. “Is it really you?”

She rolled her head and grinned hungrily, taking two steps forward, and laughed. What an absurd question. Who else, after all, in all the realms, looked quite like her? 

Only the dead. And she was anything but. 

“Dearest Tanya… Bow before your Kahnum. Bow before _me._”

After but a moment’s pause, the Edenian sorceress nodded stiffly, and took a knee. She bowed her head, but could not help herself. She stole another furtive glance at the woman clothed in brown peasant’s garb, and marveled at the beauty that tore through her cheeks with a dozen razor sharp teeth. 

The elder gods had heard her prayers; her love had returned to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please kudos and comment!


	5. Silver Whispers

“We need you to go to Chaosrealm.”

Jin opened his eyes and looked at Cassie, locking eyes with his squad’s leader as her mother carried on. She recognized the concerned look. She shared it. 

“The Seidan government are adamant that the Black Dragon were hired by a man named Havik. If we want even the smallest of chances that Seido will sign a treaty declaring ourselves allies, we’ll have to bring him to Hotaru, Seido’s minister of justice.”

“And… when would this be, exactly?” Cassie asked, reining in a grimace. Jin rubbed at his temples with two fingers and suppressed a groan of annoyance. 

“Four days from now. The 23rd.” Sonya sighed, and put her hands firmly on her hips. “Its a risky move, I know. I wouldn’t be sending your unit if it weren’t our only option. The Seidans sent word that the only way they’d agree to sit down and hash out an agreement is if we brought them whoever it was that hired the Black Dragon to kill those governors.”

“But we don’t know who-“

“I know. But they say it was Havik,” Sonya said, quieting her daughter’s protestations. “With the Reiko Accords expiring, we won’t have any allies left. Chaosrealm doesn’t even have any diplomatic channels we can use, so they’re a bust, and the Netherrealm’s current leaderships is… less than ideal.”

Sonya fell quiet, and Cassie’s heart broke for her mother, as well as for Jin. They had both lost friends, family even, to Shinnok’s darkness. People who could never be saved, never be brought back into the light. 

She had grown up hearing stories about them. Kang and Lao, who never passed up a chance to razz her father and remind him that he was all too human. Smoke, who loved Grandmaster Sub-Zero more closely than a brother, and who had spent the time between conflicts staying under the Cyber Lin Kuei’s radar at Johnny’s old place in Hollywood. Princess Kitana, and her most loyal friend, Jade. Kabal, the noble Black Dragon defector, and Stryker, who seemed so in over his head, and so many more. 

Now all of them were lost. Worse than lost. Twisted into aberrations, husks of their former selves, filled with bitterness and rage towards those they once loved. 

“So Seido is our only choice if we wanna stay on top of the game,” Cassie said. Sonya nodded gravely, and Jin shifted uncomfortably in his seat. 

“Alright,” He said. “We’ll let the team know. Thank you for your time, general Blade.”

Sonya nodded again, and as soon as she was out of earshot, Cassie whipped her head around to look at Jin.

“Well, looks like our plans are fucked sideways. How you wanna play this?”

Jin shrugged slightly. “I don’t think we really have much of a choice. Your mom’s right, we need Seido on our side in case things in Outworld boil over.”

“Yeah, but we need to get in contact with the resistance too.”

“Reschedule?” He half-heartedly suggested.

“No, the longer we wait, the less likely it’ll be that they’ll still be in the same spot.” She groaned, deep in her throat, and massaged her neck. “Alright, here’s the play; I’ll handle the Seido shit, you sneak off to Outworld and make contact with the resistance.”

Jin nodded slowly. “Riiiiight, and then you’ll get hung up on a pike while I get eaten by a bunch of angry tarkatans.”

Cassie rolled her eyes. “I’ll bring Takeda and Jacqui with me to apprehend this Havik person or whatever. You’ll have Frost as backup. And besides, you’re only there to negotiate. With any luck, you won’t have to fire a single arrow.”

“Luck? What’s that again?” He asked dryly. “Fine. But if we get back and find out that your eyes are marbled and your teeth were turned into gummy bears, I reserve the right to say I told you so.”

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Frost set her mask down on the wooden table, and knelt on a simple cushion beside it. A mug of hot tea warmed her perpetually cold fingers, and she smiled softly at the heat. It was rare to feel such a sensation. Such moments came fleetingly, scattered scarcely across the years ever since her powers made themselves apparent in her childhood. 

She heard the creaking of a wooden door, and felt a flutter in her chest as it closed. 

“You’ve returned,” The gruff voice of an older man noted, as he dropped a heavy canvas bag beside the door frame. 

“Yes, sifu,” Frost said, nodding her affirmations. She watched as her master set about fixing his own cup of tea with the kettle she had brought to a boil. He offered a few brief looks in her direction, but said nothing until after he had sat down across from her. 

“You are a child of two worlds, Frost. Now more than ever before.” 

The statement was made without question, and without continuation, without elaboration. He expected a response, but what that response would be… it was for his student to choose. 

“I’m not abandoning my clan for the OIA,” She insisted, voice filled with equal parts indignation and worry. Kuai Liang raised a single brow.

“Did I imply that you were?” 

Frost bristled at the question, and tore her eyes away from the man with slowly greying temples. “You insinuated,” She said.

“No. You assumed,” He said in turn. Her eyes narrowed, and he took a sip from his mug. “Frost, speak honestly with me. Do you feel that your loyalties are divided between the Lin Kuei and your duties elsewhere?”

Frost shifted in her seat, and turned the mug in her hands. The heat had subsided ever so slightly, and the familiar cold returned. She could hear the wind outside whistling away. None of it worked towards setting her mind at ease. 

“I… I don’t.” She stopped, and her face showed the struggle within her mind, the decision of what to say, and what ought to be left unsaid. “My loyalties aren’t in question. Its my practices.”

Kuai nodded, and placed one hand on his knee as he contemplated the admission. Frost took a sharp breath inwards, and continued. 

“The Lin Kuei, we- we follow _tradition_. When you found me, that’s what saved me, from what my life used to be. The structure, the ideals, the way we live. And the OIA, they don’t. Its not just a different group, its a different _world_.”

“You grew up in that world,” Kuai pointed out. 

“Yeah. And it nearly destroyed my life,” She admitted, her voice falling to a low, harsh whisper. She hoped her master wouldn’t detect the shame in her voice. “I was nothing. The child of an abusive creep and a deadbeat who didn’t even know he had cryomancer blood running through his veins. I was half-dead and delirious when you… you saved me.”

“Mm.” Kuai looked off, away from his student, as his mind wandered towards his own life, and the path it took. “The Lin Kuei is no stranger to the advances of the outside world. Before I reinstated the old ways, we were not too dissimilar to the Special Forces.”

“That’s why I feel this- this _conflict_,” Frost said, frustration seeping into her every word. Her tea had been forgotten entirely, and now grew colder by the moment as her frigid aura subconsciously increased. “As a liason to the OIA, will I corrupt our clan, like Sektor did?”

Kuai looked at her, and yet he said nothing. He had no answers to give. 

Frost sighed, and slumped backwards. She looked over the empty shack and felt a deep, deep fear begin to crystalize in her chest. Her master wasn’t there, not really. He was down by the statues of the previous grandmasters, training initiates, as he did every other night. 

And she was still too afraid to bring her concerns to him directly. Too afraid that he would reject her, and the corrupting influence that she carried. 

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Mileena tore into the taigore meat with the ravenous approach that one might expect from a half-tarkatan woman. Tanya admired the sight from a distance. She couldn’t help but admire the shaggy black haired woman’s ripping and tearing, the flashes of fangs that glinted past the bloody purple-red meat. 

And yet, she couldn’t help but notice that something was… different. The shape of her arms, perhaps? Or was it the slope of her jawline? The placement of her extra teeth? 

Something had changed. Something physical, not mental. She was still the same Mileena, through and through. That became evident during her reintroduction to the resistance, when she had stolen the attention of all in attendance and declared her intentions to resume leadership. 

Rain had protested, attempted to declare her a shapeshifter in disguise. Mileena had responded by threatening to rip his throat out and feed on his holy remains. Only their Kahnum would relish in the thought of eating a demigod’s flesh. It was all the proof that Tanya needed. But it did not answer all the questions on her mind. It only raised more. 

Mileena stopped suddenly, and the half-eaten bone fell to her plate. Her head snapped to Tanya’s position, and a slow smile played across her face. 

“Tanya…” She whispered, in a voice that was hoarse, yet forceful all the same. She carried her father’s commanding tone with her, all those years later. 

“Yes, Mileena Kahnum?” The witch tilted her head, and waited for Mileena to come to her. 

Soon enough, Mileena was peering up at Tanya, her nose twitching ever so slightly as she picked up trace scents off the woman. She could tell the path the resistance camp had taken from the lingering smells of dank soil and Outworld wildflowers, or of sea salt and bloated, shipwrecked remains. A path laid out in her mind, going back months. 

“How long has it been?” She asked with furrowed brows and searching eyes.

“Five years,” Tanya told her plainly. 

“Hnn. Thank you, sweet Tanya, for your… service,” She drawled. “You have kept my people warm, and alive, and _fighting_. For that, I will have to… _reward you_,” She said with a low laugh. 

Tanya’s lips curled into a thin, smug smile. “I seek no rewards for my deeds, my Kahnum. But if you are offering…”

Mileena grinned, and wrapped her fingers around the back of Tanya’s neck. Long, jagged nails dug into the dark flesh, and a small gasp slipped from Tanya’s lips. 

“You are _mine_,” Mileena growled. “Not his.”

Tanya grinned, and laid a gentle hand on Mileena’s cheek. Her fingers fluttered just above the marred flesh, and Mileena’s peachy skin reddened. Tanya looked down at Mileena and chuckled softly as the rebel leader’s blushing grew more pronounced. 

“As I seem to recall, Mileena Kahnum… It is _you_ who belongs to me, is it not?”

Mileena snarled, but looked away, averting her eyes. Her fingers slipped from Tanya’s neck, as Tanya hooked one finger around the ring that dangled from Mileena’s hastily sewn pink collar. 

“Out there,” Tanya whispered, gesturing with her head to the village outside their hovel, “You are in charge, and I will not question your command. But in here… You are mine, Mileena, and I will do as I wish.”

Mileena’s growling grew smaller, more like the whimper of a bruised animal than a ferocious beast. But when Tanya tugged on the collar around her neck, she jerked to attention. 

“Its like I never even died,” She whispered. Tanya smiled sadly, and stole a kiss from her Kahnum. 

“For you, perhaps,” She said quietly. “But for me, it has been far too long since I last saw your beautiful face. Now, shall I take my reward _now_, or _after_ we ambush that caravan?”

Mileena grinned. “Whichever you prefer, dearest Tanya.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please kudos and comment!


	6. Wastelands

Jacqui looked at the gauntlet in her hand. She slid her thumb along a groove, just behind the barrel of the gun, and clicked down a switch. It popped open, allowing her to slip an arm inside. She flexed her muscles, felt the padded insides press against her dark skin, and gave Cassie a sharp nod.

“Ready?” Cassie asked. 

“In and out, right?” 

“Exactly. Takeda, you good?” She asked, turning to look at the Shirai Ryu who stood by the dormant portal. 

He tightened the yellow bandana around his forehead, and pulled his steel mask up over his mouth. The skull that was etched into it seemed to almost turn him into a different person entirely. Colder, more efficient, and far less talkative than the class clown that Jacqui had fallen in love with, and that Cassie had grown to trust as a teammate and friend. 

Jacqui was just grateful he only wore it on these kinds of missions. The ones that built up a knot in her stomach. 

“Never been to Chaosrealm before,” She said lightly, as though it might help ease her nerves. “You think they have nice food?”

“Master Hasashi says they mostly eat grubs and maggots,” Takeda said. 

Cassie shook her head, pushing away conjured memories of insects crawling out of eye sockets and from between lips. She was going to an entire dimension named after absurdity and fear. She didn’t need any extra help in turning her stomach over. 

“Let’s just, uh, get this taken care of, yeah?” Cassie said, looking between her smaller than average group. Takeda and Jacqui both nodded in agreement, and joined her at the mouth of the portal. 

The old, weathered structure loomed over them. Twisting, knotted igneous rock sprouted from the desert floor like stony trees. When Cassie approached it, it seemed to almost… breathe. 

It was one of very few natural portals that still existed, untouched and often dormant throughout the years. It was the only one of those portals that they had never used before. 

“Is it just me, or does this one feel different from the others?” Jacqui asked quietly. “It’s definitely creepier, right?”

“I like the one in Guatemala,” Cassie said. “It’s pretty.”

“Of course it’s pretty. Everything about Seido is pretty,” Takeda responded. “This one definitely skeeves me out worse than Outworld’s, at least.”

Cassie took a deep breath and nodded. There was no more putting it off and they all knew it. She reached out, and she touched the slick black rock with one hand. Despite the oppressive heat of the Nevada desert, it was cool to the touch. She recalled the words that Sonya had told her she would need, the incantation that would bring the ancient structure to life once more. 

“Thiwe dindweg, ngdican thwi ylfsem, elreb llye, nehrio idol…”

She opened her eyes, and watched as yellow-orange strings of light began to weave themselves into a disorganized lattice. They crossed themselves, over and over and over again, before swirling in on themselves, creating the all too familiar shape of a portal. 

She closed her eyes, clenched her fists, braced herself as well as she could, and stepped through. Normally, stepping through a portal was like diving into a pool of water. Sometimes it was refreshing, sometimes it was just a strange sensation that hardly even registered. This… this was different.

It was like a layer of thick, oozing honey was being stretched over her skin, sticking to her hair and to her lips and not breaking, only growing thinner and thinner, stretching farther and farther over her as she struggled through it. It seemed to not even want her to pass through, but it wouldn’t allow her to go back either. She felt stuck, trapped, like a fly in a spider’s web. 

Then her hair caught fire, and she felt her ribcage invert, and crawl against the insides of her chest. 

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Jin smiled softly as he and Frost exited the portal. It always felt like walking through a lake, only to come out dry on the other end. It felt good. There was no experience quite like it, in his or any other realm. 

The swirling blue vortex slowed its churning behind them, and they stood on the quiet steps of the portal hall. Once upon a time, Shang Tsung’s shadow priests watched over this area, prepared to hex or curse those who appeared through the portal at a moment’s notice. Jin’s own cousins had done battle with the priests at another such area, on the opposite side of the Kahn’s arena, many years ago. 

Now, the halls were largely abandoned. The shadow priests’ order had been wiped out, snuffed away in the dark one by one, as one of Kotal’s earliest acts as Kahn of Outworld. The last of the priests had been slain in some dark corner of the wastelands. She had been a starving, paranoid wreck, convinced that the Osh-Tekk would stop at nothing to ensure her death. 

She had been right. 

Frost looked around the halls, muscles tensed and vigilant, prepared for any sudden attacks from sight unseen. 

“Relax,” Jin told her as he strolled across the old clay-brick steps, towards the wasteland outside. “Kotal’s people are lax when it comes to portal security. They’ve got more of a “you cause a problem, _then_ we string you up and kill you” policy.”

She nodded in understanding, but did not let her guard down. She kept her eyes on all corners as Jin led the way. 

“The village shouldn’t be too far from here,” He said as they came to the bottom of the largely abandoned structure, and were greeted by the violet rock and black skies of Outworld. 

“How far is “not too far”?” Frost asked tersely, as her eyes panned across the jagged stones and crumbling architecture that seemed to surround them on all sides. She could have sworn she saw a pteranodon flying off into the distance. 

“Maybe a day’s walk,” Jin said. He looked over his shoulder at her and grinned devilishly. “Don’t worry, it’ll give us a lot of time to bond.”

Frost stifled the urge to groan, and trailed after him. A pair of small ice daggers formed in her hand, pulled from the ample moisture in the air. Just in case anybody tried to get in their way, she reasoned. Although, out here, she almost began to doubt that Outworld could host much life at all. 

Jin pointed to a tall, sharp looking spire in the distance, and Frost followed his gaze. 

“See that? Its one of the old towers that shadow priests lived in. The Moroi village should be in the forest just beyond it.”

“I’ve actually been studying the shadow priests a lot lately. Maybe on the way back we can stop by the tower, see if there’s any texts left that-“

“No,” Frost said sharply. 

“I said _after_ we meet with-“

“No.”

Jin rolled his eyes. “And to think, _I_ used to be the asshole of the group.”

Even as Jin bemoaned her rigid stance, Frost honed her mind on the task ahead. This was a mission, not a road trip. It was a chance to prove herself to her sifu, to show that she was worthy of being a Lin Kuei. So long as her mission went more smoothly than that of the Shirai Ryu boy, she was certain, her place could not be questioned. 

That was what she reminded herself, time and time again, as the hours wore by. It was seemingly impossible just how uneventful their trek through the wasteland was, but when the most pulse pounding part of it was the sudden and brief appearance of a stray Naknadan child, who was easily shooed away by the cryomancer’s icy glare, she began to realize that nothing was beyond possibility. 

Even Outworld could be boring sometimes.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Cassie groaned, and she opened her eyes slowly, wincing at the sharp pain in her side. Instantly, she could feel that much of her gear was missing. Her tactical bodysuit had been stripped away, and she was left only in her tank top and boyshorts. Her vision was blurred, and there was a heavy film over her lips and tongue. 

She lurched forward and retched, expelling a liter’s worth of a warm, semi-viscous fluid. It smelled like… cherry cola? But as her vision became more clear, she saw a soupy orange substance covering her hands, and spattered across the floor. 

She crawled forward slowly, and looked around herself, trying to get her bearings. She could just barely make out the shapes of two other figures in the darkness, one helping the other up, supporting them as best as they could. 

“Jacqui…?” She called out hoarsely into the darkness. One of the figures looked in her direction, and reached out with one hand before collapsing. The other, Takeda presumably, lifted Jacqui over his shoulders and began to jog in Cassie’s direction. He set Jacqui down beside her and gently patted Cassie’s cheek.

“Are you awake?” He asked, though the words were garbled and muffled by the state Cassie found herself in. She nodded weakly and pushed herself up on her arms. 

“Is Jacqui okay?” She sputtered. The skull shape of his mask seemed to almost move and jitter as he tilted his head.

“She will live,” He told her. His hand cupped Cassie’s chin, and he began... to laugh. “The agonies of this realm are such a joy, aren’t they?”

“Wha…? Takeda, the fuck are you talking about?” 

Cassie watched him as his laughter grew. He doubled over on himself as the strange, awful sounds reverberated off the walls. He sounded like a hyena, with the lungs of a cancer patient who still smoked two packs a day. But as her vision cleared further, one thing became dreadfully apparent.

The figure wasn’t wearing a skull shaped mask. That was just his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you figured out the incantation, you get a free internet hug. 
> 
> Please kudos and comment!


	7. You Simply Must

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay in updates. Between work and quarantine, I don’t have a whole lot of energy for writing fic. This chapter took quite a while to slowly chip away at, but I’ve already gotten started on the next one, so hopefully things will get moving along a bit better!

His name was Havik. He was a priest, one who preached rapturous disorder and glorious nihilism. He was the target they had been sent to capture. 

He smelled like rotting flesh and bloated stomach gasses. He had eyes like a starving wolf. He had hair like a corpse. He had nails like razor blades. He had a robe that evoked Death, and a curling pendant that hung from his neck, made of segmented amber glass. 

He was hungry. 

“Rise from your grave, little birdy,” He said without once moving his lips. How could he, after all, when he had none? His face was simply weathered skin stretched over a skull, with no sign of musculature or cartilage to fill the space between. 

Cassie looked up at him, and felt the sudden urge to kick him in the chest. When her foot made contact, what surprised her most was that her legs hadn’t been bound. It seemed, she noticed, neither her hands. 

She scrambled to her feet and away from their kidnapper, who coughed up blood on the ground before laughing. 

“Good morning, mary sunshine,” He cooed with a voice like rasping, choking death. He stood tall, and spread his arms wide. The clear golden sky stretched out beyond him, like an ocean reflected above their heads. “You’ve gone and shined away the moon! Ahhh daylight! The beautiful golden dawning of another day… another senseless _chapter_ of our lives.” 

With one long, bony finger, he pointed at Cassie. “You are the first face I have seen in some time, you know, you know, you simply must.”

Cassie looked at him, and as he stared at her, she blinked. “I must… what?”

He laughed again. It split her ears, every time he did so. He raised his finger to his teeth, bared and rotting in his head, in a playful gesture. “Look alive, sunshine, you’re talking to the last man on earth. You simply must… you simply must. It’s a dead realm, and I’m the crypt keeper. The zoo keeper, but there is no zoo. No confinement, no _confinement!_ No confinement, except for the crushing _loneliness!_”

He fell backwards on himself, his spine giving way, contorting, so that his head touched the ground behind his bare feet. He laughed, and he laughed, and he laughed, as Cassie took stock of her surroundings. 

The golden sky crashed down against floating spires of twisted, jagged rock and rushing, endlessly flowing water. They hung, suspended in the air as if by invisible strands of thread, over an ocean that seemed a mirror image of the sky above. It gave her vertigo, and yet it seemed to mirror, in a different way, Seido. Where Seido was clean, this place was dirty. Where Seido was mapped out logically, intuitively, these floating islands moved with the breeze, constantly shifting patterns and locations. Where Seido was full of bustling life… this realm was empty. Forgotten. Dead.

Even the last living soul seemed dead, in his own way. 

“Where’s Jacqui?” Cassie asked, turning her focus back to Havok. “Where’s Takeda? What did you do with them?”

“I let them go,” He said with a roll of his head, before bringing his torso back up and snapping his body together. “Who am I to control you? Who am I to bind you to this place, or any other? I am a servant of chaos, and the wolf is hungry, and the geese are barking, and the turtle… the turtle snaps its jaw shut on the ties that bind you here. The turtle sets you free. The turtle freed me.”

“Riiight,” Cassie said slowly, sizing up Havik as best she could. He was frail, and yet he towered over her. His skeletal ribs and long, swinging arms screamed danger, yet she wasn’t certain if he even had the strength to do much damage at all. 

Things weren’t going as expected. Still, as her thoughts re-ordered themselves, she knew what she had to do. Apprehend Havik now, lest he slip away, then set about finding Takeda and Jacqui. 

Simple enough. 

She felt around at her belt clip, and found that her baton was missing. No doubt lost forever in the raging amber sea below. That was fine, she told herself. She could improvise. 

She approached him with caution. He held his hands outwards, stretched towards the horizon, using his fingers to frame something off in the distance. 

“You said this was a dead realm?” She asked. He nodded slightly, and a small groan of confirmation escapes from his throat. “How did it die? Where’d everyone go?”

He tilted his head, as if to smile. “Entropy makes ghosts of us all, little birdy,” He rasped. “Everything stays, but it still changes, like gnats like flies like pretty little bugs quashed and scraped away. We lived to serve the cacophonic symphony, and we gave our lives to it.”

“But not you?”

He spread his arms and looked to the sky. “One must stay, one must stay, stay to play the game. There are no rules in my game, little birdy, only pain, and aching sorrow. It is the way. His way. Take… me away.”

He looked at her again, and she could see the black, oily tears pooling around his eyes. He held out a frail, bony hand to her, and gave her a thumb’s up. 

“You didn’t have anything to do with what happened in Seido, did you?” She asked, though she knew he would not answer. But she also knew that she had no choice. She had to take him away, and deliver him to the Seidans. She had orders. They had made a deal, and this man, he was the bargaining chip. 

But when she looked at him, imagined what would happen, she felt only intense, crushing guilt. Guilt for what? Either way, his fate was a hellish nightmare; left to endlessly wander a realm with no company, or framed for a crime he did not commit. Killed, most likely. Executed. 

Like Mileena. 

She hardly heard the whir of a line being extended, or the sound of it implanting itself in the rock. But when Havik’s leg was snapped in half by Takeda, as he pulled himself over to this island from another on a zipcord, she was released from the guilt in her mind, if only for the time being, and if only to focus on something equally concerning.

“Dude! What the fuck?!” Cassie cried out instinctively. 

“Ohhh, thank you, daddy,” The living corpse rasped as he buckled under his own weight, no longer able to support himself on a fractured leg. 

“Please, for the love of all the elder gods, never say that again,” Cassie muttered. 

“Cosigned,” Takeda said flatly. He looked down at Havik, who laughed in a wheezing, strangled manner, and shuddered at the sight of the cleric. He looked to Cassie, eyes steely and sharp, and retracted his line. “Where’s Jacqui?” He asked. 

“No clue. Saw her when we landed here, but I passed out. I’m guessing you didn’t see her anywhere…” 

Takeda shook his head. Behind his mask, she couldn’t see his jaw clench, or his heart pound anxiously at the thought of harm coming to her. Just the narrowing of eyes, and the furrowing of his brow. He turned away from her, and looked at the wide array of jagged, floating islands that sprawled out in front of them. 

“Then let’s find her,” He said quietly, more to himself than to Cassie. He took a running start and leapt from their island, fired his line, and began the search once more.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

They had been walking for what felt, to Jin, like weeks. In truth, it had been two days. Two long, quiet days, filled with a sense of tension that seemed ready to snap at any moment. Outworld was a dangerous place, after all. Despite that fact remaining in the back of his mind at all hours, at all moments of the day, it seemed as though danger, and excitement of any other sort, was keeping itself hidden from them at all costs. He doubted that it was absent altogether. Thinking that way, as alluring as it was, would simply put them in even more danger. 

Still, he wished his traveling companion was a bit more… verbose. 

“So… Sky’s orange today.”

Frost didn’t respond. She gnawed silently at her skewer of meat, produced from a small quadruped the duo had hunted prior to setting up camp. Jin looked at her from across the fire that had been lit, and he sighed.

“It was dark blue yesterday, right? And purple the day before.”

Frost said nothing.

“Do you ever wonder why?”

Evidently, she did not. 

“There’s an interesting explanation in Shokan folklore.”

Frost stopped, and lowered her skewer. Jin looked back up to her, and saw her body tense. The air around her began to still, with droplets of moisture pooling together and becoming visible in the seconds that followed. The temperature dropped, and he followed her harsh gaze. There, off in the distance, to the west, a figure could be seen. Amongst the rubble and crumbling spires, there was a centaur, running with a limp.

Jin sprang into action, following Frost’s lead. As she summoned a pair of ice daggers, Jin drew his bow and nocked an arrow. He looked to the centaur, and then past them. There were others, figures in makeshift armor, chasing their quarry. Jin sighed, and let an arrow loose. It struck the ground between the centaur and their would-be killers, and brought the chase to a brief pause.

“Get the archer!” The leader of the Osh Tekk pack demanded. He raised his hooked blade, only for his wrist to be skewered by a second arrow. 

“Two on five, sound good to you?” Jin asked as Frost raced past him, and into the fray. 

“Shut up and take a life,” She snapped, sticking her daggers into the neck of the skewered Osh Tekk and finishing the job. 

Jin sighed, and let another arrow fly. It stuck through one end of an Osh Tekk’s neck and came out the other, remaining lodged in his throat as he tried, in vain, to remove it. All he had managed to do by the time he collapsed was snap off the arrow’s tail-end. 

Frost brought her hand up to the face of yet another Osh Tekk, the last of the small hunting party, and smirked beneath her mask. Ice crept from her fingers to his skin, and he scrambled away quickly as he could, lest she freeze all the skin off his face. 

“Scream and run,” She said flatly. It was an order that he was all too willing to oblige; running off into the distance. Before he could vanish past the distant rubble, however, something happened. Something unseen, from where Jin and Frost stood, but which left the final Osh Tekk gasping for air as he slipped to the ground. Blood pooled out from his now-split-open chest cavity, and his lungs fell back into his chest a moment after. Something, someone, had plucked them from his chest and discarded them with equal concern. 

Someone who appeared before Jin and Frost in a shimmer, as light began to once more bounce off her scales, rather than distorting around them. 

“Notro, are you alright?” Khameleon asked, disregarding the Earthrealmers for the time being, instead honing in on the centaur’s injured leg. She knelt down and inspected the wound closely, tsking at her ally’s reckless nature leading to what was sure to be another scar. They had more than enough already, as Jin and Frost soon noticed. Lines of scabbed and scarred flesh were drawn all over their body, random in pattern and varied in their causes. 

“I’ll live,” They said, in a voice that was calmer, smoother, than their rough appearance would indicate. 

“You may not have, if it weren’t for us saving your ass. You’re welcome for that, by the way,” Jin said as he pushed his way into their conversation. Frost rolled her eyes behind him, and tuned out what words were next to be said, opting to spend her valuable time keeping an eye out for any further trouble. 

Khameleon sighed, or hissed, perhaps, and turned to look at the monk. “You saved my friend. I will not tell my allies you are intruding in our realm. Believe me when I tell you that this is a great kindness.” Notro nodded their agreement, and Jin grimaced.

“Actually, about that… I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind us coming back to camp with you?”

Khameleon’s suspicious gaze bore into him like a drill, and Notro’s nostrils flared. “We know you, human. We remember the last time you and your brethren came to our realm. You killed our Kahnum. Do you truly believe you would be at all a welcome sight in our home? You are lucky it was us you encountered, rather than Tanya.”

Jin scratched at the back of his neck. “I’m… I’m sorry. Please know that we don’t mean any disrespect. We came here because we wanted to make up for what we did. Kotal is wrong, and he’s no ally to our realm. So we thought we’d throw our lot in with you.”

“I would be a fool to believe you,” Khameleon said. She rose to her full height and peered down her snout at Kung Jin. Beneath her veil, any emotions she may have felt towards him, and his claims, were disguised. 

Jin dropped to one knee, and bowed his head. “Then bring us to Tanya in chains, and imprison us for our part in Mileena Kahnum’s execution. We submit ourselves to the resistance willingly, if it would prove that we’re no longer your enemies.”

He glanced up at the spy, and found her exchanging a look with her compatriot. Her gaze turned back to him, and she motioned with two clawed fingers for him to rise. 

“I suppose I am a fool,” She muttered, before pointing off into the distance. “We will travel this way. It is faster than the path you were taking.” 

“You knew we were coming?” He asked.

“Of course we did.”

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Tanya sighed contentedly as her arm snaked over Mileena’s shoulders. She held the assassin-turned-queen loosely, but her grip over the other woman was strong; she need only whisper a suggestion in her ear if she wanted to see it pursued with all the single-minded ferocity that Mileena was capable of. 

She had accomplished much without Mileena, but she would accomplish far more now that her lover had been returned to her side. Convincing the disparate factions of Outworld that they were starving under Kotal’s rule, and that their only hope for true autonomy and fair treatment came from siding with the Edenian resistance? That was easy. Giving them a single leader who could be looked to as an icon, and who could lend some legitimacy to their efforts? Well, Tanya always considered herself more of a tactician than a public speaker. Mileena, however, could draw every eye in the room to her without so much as a word, and her status as the child of both Shao Kahn _and_ Queen Sindel lended the rebellion the legitimacy it sorely needed.

And so she had her Kahnum back, hanging from her fingers on a string and ready to do as she was instructed. It lit a fire in Tanya’s belly, one which had been lying dormant in the five years she spent without her most treasured puppet. 

And, it seemed, things would continue to go her way. 

Two humans stood before Mileena, with heads bowed and hands empty. Khameleon had brought them with her back to Nitara’s village, and caused quite a fuss in doing so. If not for Rain’s timely intervention, the cryomancer likely would have killed Kintaro, or vice versa. 

“You… I remember you…” Mileena snarled, baring her teeth and gripping her arm rest with paling knuckles. She leaned forward and sniffed the air, before her lips curled into a cold, predatory smile. 

“Remembered by Outworld’s true Kahnum? How flattering,” The man said. Though Jin tried to sound sincere, the irreverent tone he always carried with him couldn’t be disguised. 

“You helped that insect _kill_ me.”

“...so you remember that part too, huh?”

“Yes. I _do_,” She hissed. Her voice had lowered to a cold whisper, yet the chapel seemed to become swamped in darkness as her mood soured. 

Frost leveled Jin with a severe look, and stepped forward, drawing the Kahnum’s focus. Where Jin had bowed, she instead looked Mileena dead in the eye and folded her arms in front of her chest. She stood up straight, and spoke with no deference to be found. 

“You’re looking for allies, aren’t you? To help you kill that rat on your father’s throne, and free your mother’s realm?”

Mileena tilted her head, and traced the edge of one burgeoning tooth with her finger as a small smile crossed her face. “Go on…”

“The Lin Kuei once brought themselves before your father, and pledged their loyalty to him. Today, we do so again. But on one condition.”

Mileena’s smile grew. Reckless and eager to proceed, she nodded, this time without bothering to look to her lover for guidance. Tanya bristled, but said nothing. 

“Tell me,” Mileena ordered. Beneath her mask, Frost smirked, and shot Jin a look as if to say ‘You wish you were me right now’.

“When Edenia has gained its freedom, you sign an agreement with Earthrealm; we’re allies, from here until the day the realms die.”

“Mileena Kahnum-“ Tanya started, only to be silenced with a calmly raised hand. She gritted her teeth. The promise of allyship was fine, but Mileena was still young; hardly thirty years old. She didn’t know how long an eternity could truly be. But to speak over her, to make her own authority apparent, would be foolish in the best of circumstances. 

“I will… consider it,” Mileena said, boring into Frost with hunger in her eyes. Jin smiled, and murmurs broke out amongst those resistance members who were present for the audience. Murmurs which, like Tanya, were silenced with but a wave of her hand. 

She leaned forward, propping her elbow on her thigh, and dug her nails into the wooden arm of her makeshift throne. “But not until you do me a little _favor_, first…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, don’t forget to kudos and comment!


	8. Downpour

Raiden bristled. Seido felt… different. The vibrations in the air were unlike those of Earthrealm’s, to a degree that was imperceptible to mortals, but to him were as plain as the sun and the moon which hung in the sky. His mouth puckered, a sour taste on his lips, growing stronger and stronger with every moment he spent in this realm which was not his own.

He was weaker here. He could feel it. Were it not for the amulet that was affixed to his breast, he would have become sluggish and tired just from entering Seido. With the amulet’s passive power, he was still notably weaker than if he were at home, with the energies of Earthrealm coursing through his being. 

Still, if he had to spend any time in a realm that was not his, Seido was the most in line with his preferences. Its people understood the importance of law and order, of keeping other realms at an arm’s distance. 

He stood across from Governor Hotaru, their eyes locked for the briefest of moments as the portal flashed to life, and as a small group of travelers emerged. 

“Raiden. Hotaru.” Cassandra nodded her head towards the snowy-haired pair of men. They each sneered, not bothering to hide their disdain, and nodded in return. A quietly muttered “yeah, that’s not unsettling at all,” could only be heard by Jacqui and Takeda, who flanked her on either side. 

“You have brought the terrorist?” Hotaru asked, looking past the trio, to the skeletal figure who trailed behind them. A cocktail of pleasure and disgust filled the Seidan politician, flooding his veins the instant he laid eyes on the accused. But something was amiss. “Why is he not in chains?”

Cassie blinked, and stammered for a moment, until Jacqui spoke up. “He came willingly. We didn’t see any reason to _hogtie_ him for you.” 

“A mistake you should be sure not to repeat,” Hotaru spat, motioning for his men to swarm Havik. Within mere moments, the cleric was on his knees, bound with thick steel wires around his hands, ankles, knees, chest and neck. 

“Hold,” Raiden commanded, before the Seidan guards were able to remove Havik from the portal hall. He stepped forward, and grabbed the glass icon which hung from Havik’s neck on a chain. With a single, fluid movement, he tore it from the man’s neck, and eyed it with a look that Cassie couldn’t quite describe. 

“That’s not yours…” Havik growled. 

“Uhhh, what is that?” Cassie asked, only to be met with a glare from Raiden. 

“This belongs to the Elder Gods,” He said, tucking it away in his robes. “It is clear that, among his many crimes, Havik is also a _thief_. No matter. It shall soon be returned to its rightful place in the heavens. You may do with him as you wish,” He muttered to Hotaru. 

“Take him away,” Hotaru ordered with a small flick of his fingers. “I will schedule his trial as soon as I return to my chambers.”

“Wait, you aren’t even going to ask if he did it?” Cassie called out, as Hotaru turned to leave. He stopped for just a moment, but did not look at her. “You can’t just lock him away! I mean, shit, do you really think he was capable of waging a _war_ against Seido? Of getting the Black Dragon to work for him?”

“Chaosrealm is the natural enemy of our people. No one else is capable of such… such _destruction_. He is responsible.”

“And you have evidence to prove that?”

Hotaru gritted his teeth. “We need no evidence. It is in his _nature_.”

“Liars lie still, and jailers will kill,” Havik muttered from his shell of guardsmen. For a sliver of a moment, Cassie saw him, through the cracks between the guards. He looked so weak, so tired. Nothing but skin clinging to weary old bones. He smiled at her, and she felt her stomach wrench, and form a knot.

“Please, just… just leave him in Chaosrealm. He’s the last of his people. There’s no reason to lock him up here,” She pleased, searching for any trace of sympathy in Hotaru’s eyes. Instead, he offered her only a cold smile. One which sent a shiver down her spine and wrenched her stomach into a knot.

“I know he is. And that is why his execution will be a glorious day for Seido. And for Earthrealm, our new ally in the eradication of chaotic elements throughout the realms. Thank you, Cage, for your service to universal order. Good day.”

With that, he marched out of the hall, into the Seidan sunlight just outdoors. The guards grabbed Havik, and as Cassie went to speak up, to step forward, to _stop them_, Raiden gripped her shoulder tightly. She looked up at him, and found the same stony expression on his face that he wore so often in the past few years. A mask that betrayed no emotion, no hidden mirth, none of the kindness that she saw in her youth. 

“Lord Raiden, we can’t- _I_ can’t-“

“Let this happen, Cassandra Cage,” He told her, staring ahead at the departing armored figures. “Havik’s crimes have little to do with us.”

She looked to the floor. To her combat boots on the spotless marble floor. Orange water and black sand still clung to them; remnants of her trip to the other realm. She sighed, and wiped the bottom of her shoe against the floor, leaving a small trail of detritus in the portal hall, before looking to Raiden once again. To the chain that hung from his robes, and the glass icon the chain was connected to. 

“What is it? The necklace Havik was wearing.”

“It is nothing. Do not concern yourself with it,” He said quietly, before turning on his heel, and vanishing through the portal. Cassie hung her head, and Jacqui patted her on the back.

“You really buy that?” She asked her companions. Takeda shook his head. 

“Hell no,” Jacqui scoffed. “But I just spent about four hours trapped in a sand cocoon in Chaosrealm, so I’m not exactly gonna pick a fight with the guy. I’m still shaking glass out of my hair.”

“So what’s our play, boss?” Takeda asked, looking from the portal to the realm just outside. Cassie sighed, and ran a hand through her hair. 

“I think we’re gonna do some research.”

\-----------------------------------------------------

“I can’t believe she wanted a helmet,” Frost muttered with a shake of her head. Again, she and Jin found themselves wandering Outworld’s wastelands. Purple and black clouds swirled above their heads, and lightning flashed in the distance, but no rain fell. Not yet at least. 

“It’s not just any helmet,” Jin told her, as the duo came up to one of the many towering spires that dotted the landscape. It was half-crumbled, its inner chambers exposed to the open air. Debris, which had fallen many years ago, littered the ground around them. Pieces as small as to be confused for mere rocks, and as large so as to serve as decent enough shelter during a storm, if you could turn it over to act as a shell of sorts. He gazed up at the tower and basked in the horrible tragedy of it all. “It’s her father’s helmet.”

Frost snorted derisively as she entered the tower, kicking over a small pile of detritus and scattering it across the dirt and dust coated floor. “Imagine giving enough of a damn about your folks to go digging for their shit.”

“So I’m gonna take a wild guess that you’re not close with your parents either?” Jin asked as he followed her inside. While she treated the ancient, crumbling spire with all the reverence of a clod of dirt, Jin found himself enraptured by the carvings along the wall, and the history that they carried. Alas, he had no time to study them, and no paper with which to replicate their designs. 

“You could say that,” She grumbled, as memories of her father shouting in cantonese came flooding back to her. “Just keep your eyes peeled. I want to get out of here as soon as possible.”

“Why? Don’t you care about the _history_ here? These texts must be thousands of years old,” Jin said with a hefty sense of awe as he picked a tome out of the rubble and dusted off its cracked leather cover. 

“Not particularly.” She walked past him, up the winding staircase that circled the inside of the tower, and froze over the gap where part of the staircase had collapsed. Jin tucked the book into his bag and trailed after her, though not without giving his surroundings a great deal of care, unlike her. 

“We could have just leapt over the gaps,” He told her as she froze another section of the staircase back into existence. 

She simply rolled her eyes, and carried on to the next floor. The higher they climbed, the darker the skies grew just outside. Jin’s habit of stopping to search for more books to rescue put some distance between himself and his more goal oriented companion. Frost huffed as rain began to fall, and freeze on her skin. She swiped at one of many cobwebs to vent her frustration, only for it to cling to her arm like glue. 

That was when she noticed the other cobwebs. Not just that they existed, but the sheer number, and size, of them. She looked upwards, and she felt her stomach drop. 

Mileena had sent them right into a Kytinn hive. 

“Jin.”

“Yeah?”

“Look. Up.” 

“Well, shit.” 

Frost steeled herself, and Jin readied his bow. But there was no need, as they would soon discover. They made their way, slowly and cautiously, to the uppermost level of the spire, where the outer wall had been completely destroyed; the space laid bare to the elements. The wind began to whip at them, the rain now beating down in a heavy downpour. 

And in the center of the room, the husk of a Kytinn lay dead. Her carapace had been cracked open, and her body frozen, from the inside out. Her eggs had been smashed, and her hive was ruined. Shao Kahn’s helmet lay on the floor, beside the corpse. 

Mileena’s killer, D’Vorah, was dead; killed by a cryomancer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That’s right, babey, Debbie’s dead! But who killed her? Why did she have Shao’s helmet? And will Cassie and co. even know how to do research without Jin leading the study sessions? 
> 
> Next time, on Dragon Ball K


	9. The Dead Still Speak

The insect was dead. The news traveled fast, from those who discovered the body to the Edenian resistance that they reported back to, to the Shokan who were loyal to the Kahnum, to those few Shokan who were loyal to the Kahn, to the Kahn himself. 

And the Kahn’s feelings were decidedly… mixed.

“Who was responsible?” He whispered, with two fingers pressed to his temple. He sat, slouched in his ornately carved throne, his typical ceremonial dress done away with. Bronze skin, unpainted, and dark hair, hanging loosely, that were seen by a select few individuals since his ascent to the throne. 

It was Reptile who answered. “A cryomancer,” He hissed. 

“Sub-Zero?”

“We… are not yet certain.” 

Kotal pounded his armrest with one fist. The stress of his position had only grown these past few years, as his support rapidly dwindled. As the stress grew, his restraint, his decorum, crumbled like the statues of Kahns whose eras had been long since passed. A sneer stretched across his lips, and he growled.

“I want to know who was responsible for this. And I want to know what that _traitor_ was still doing in Outworld. I had her declared _banished_.”

“Yes, my Kahn,” Reptile swore with a solemn bow. He touched his scaly fist to the sandstone floor, and a fierce determination sparked within him. He would find the answers, no matter the obstacle; his service to Kotal Kahn knew no bounds, and this task would not best him. 

Ermac stirred from their position by the door. A small rasp escaped their cracked and pruning lips, unnoticed by either Kotal or Reptile. A thought began to form within their mind, but they no longer recalled how to communicate it. By the time they would, the realization would have slipped from their mind in its place, and the identity of D’Vorah’s killer would remain unknown. 

“Come, friend,” Reptile whispered as he took Ermac by the arm, and guided them away from the Kahn’s chambers. 

“The sky is purple,” The decaying construct choked out. 

“Yes. The sky is purple today.”

“I miss… blue skies.”

“You are mistaken, my friend,” Reptile told them with a pat on the arm. “The skies have never been blue.”

Ermac fell quiet again, and thought deeply on the matter. They did remember blue skies. Clear skies, without a dark cloud or crumbling tower in sight. Blue skies which reminded them of home, their true home, which they had not seen in so long. The souls remembered, and longed to return to, Edenia. 

But the mind could not recall the name. 

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

The Kahnum held her father’s helmet in her hands, and her heart broke to look at it. She knelt in a small patch of dirt, near the trees which surrounded the Vaeterran village that she now called sanctuary. The helmet was cracked from Shao’s final battle with Raiden, and the elder gods who empowered him; a jagged line ran down from one eyehole to the bottom of the mask. Bone and metal were cold against her warm hands, and she touched it, reverently, to her forehead. 

“Mileena Kahnum?” 

She turned, and rose, at the sound of her retainer’s words. Tanya’s dark skin met the sunlight beautifully, her tattoos reacting as though they were light itself grafted to her skin. 

“I am all that is left, you know,” Mileena whispered, as she held the helmet up to the light. “Of my family. Father, mother, even my dear sister… All gone. All dead.”

“I… am aware, my Kahnum.” 

Mileena nodded, and lowered the helmet. The sunlight hit her face, and she sighed deeply. Her lips twitched, and the jagged teeth which broke through her cheeks flexed. “I did not see them, when I was... I saw… nothing. Nothing, until I woke up in that tube again.”

Tanya blinked. She reached out, and went to cup Mileena’s face, only for her to jerk free. Tanya’s expression hardened, and she reached out again, this time grabbing Mileena’s wrist. 

“You will not do this to me. To _us_,” Tanya hissed, her face just inches from Mileena’s. She could feel the Kahnum’s hot breath on her face, but stared, unblinking, into Mileena’s eyes. 

“Do what?” Mileena growled.

“This _petulance_. Ever since you came back, you’ve been acting without _consult_. Directing those Earthrealmers without talking to me, making deals with _cryomancers_ and-“

Mileena tilted her head, and the light glanced off her teeth. She snarled, and silenced Tanya. Reversing the grip on her wrist, she pulled the taller woman close, until their faces were nearly touching, and she sneered up at her. 

“_I_ am Kahnum. Daughter of Queen Sindel and Shao Kahn, _sister_ of Princess Kitana. These decisions are _mine_ to make. Do not forget that.”

Tanya glared, and wrestled herself free from Mileena’s vice grip. “...Yes, my Kahnum. _Forgive my outburst,_” She said tersely. After a moment, in which neither of them moved, Mileena turned from Tanya and began to stomp off; her father’s helmet hanging from her fingers, poked through its eyeholes.

“Rain!” Mileena called out. 

The general’s son turned general himself turned at the sound of her voice, from where he stood, going over a map with Khameleon and her centaur friend. The two had spent the past several days scouting, ever since Mileena’s return. Those expeditions, and the information revealed through them, inspired a series of notes and drawings, and small stones marking positions. Avenues of attack, of infiltration, of distraction… All manner of possibilities laid out for debate. 

And she was ready to hear the arguments. She was ready to strike. But she wasn’t the only one.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

All of Seido was in celebration. 

The source of chaos was soon to be eradicated for good. With Havik’s imprisonment and impending execution, the realm’s quest for a new age of order, spanning the realms, was within reach. Chaos would die. Order would blossom. Malcontents and dissidents would soon become things of the past, even their definitions lost to the sands of time.

And so, in the capital city, a festival was being held. A ceremony, in which chaos’ final agent would be exterminated. Civilians mingled and attended lectures, and looked forward to what the evening held. 

Hotaru stood at a podium, one marked with the symbol of his realm’s authority; a simple blue square, trimmed in black. He removed his helmet, and with the thought of Havik in chains, he smiled, triumphant. 

But islands away, within the walls of a prison, a group of humans found themselves with a front row seat to the _real_ show. In fact, these humans were to be the _performers_. 

Jarek sighed, and pressed the back of his head to the concrete wall behind him. A small, square room with a chamberpot and straw mat for sleeping was his home these days. Identical prison cells, arranged in a grid pattern with his own, housed Tasia and Tremor, his fellow captured Black Dragon mercenaries. 

“Raiden or Fujin?” He called out. 

“Fujin,” came Tasia’s reply. “Kotal Kahn or Kano?”

“Tch. You know I can’t say Kano. If he gets outta jail he’d kill me.”

“So you’d fuck Kotal?”

“Yeah, I guess,” He huffed. 

“This place is hell,” Tremor groaned, from his encasement of pure steel. Unlike his allies, he had not even the luxury of movement, lest he free himself from his prison with a sharp movement of the wrist, or a heavy kick. The side effect being that he couldn’t even block out the conversations he would truly rather not be privy to. 

“No, hell is watching those Johnny Cage movies with you every Saturday night,” Tasia shot back. “I’m _enjoying_ this break from movie nights.” 

“You kill me. Your words are _killing_ me right now.”

Then, a strange commotion. Unseen, but heard, from within the trio’s prison cells. Guards shouting. Metal clashing against metal. A heavily armored body, slamming into a wall, before sliding to the ground with a low, weak groan.

The Black Dragon jumped to attention. Jarek balled his fists, and Tasia tensed her muscles, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Tremor simply closed his eyes, and smiled beneath his stone mask. _Finally_, he thought to himself, some _excitement_. 

The fighting outside continued, with the sounds of snapping bones and dying, curdled screams ringing out, only to be cut short. And then, eerie silence. A stillness, which filled the air and left those still present, and living, with a sharp sense of unease. 

The assailant wasted no time in breaking down the walls, and freeing the prisoners. Not only Jarek, Tasia, and Tremor, but also those select few who had chosen to risk their lives for the sake of the dwindling Seidan rebellion. And when they saw their savior, smiles graced their faces. 

“Took you long enough,” Jarek huffed. “What, was No Face too busy to come with you? Kira?”

**“Have a nice day.”** The cyber-ninja replied with a stiff, jerky nod. 

“Why would you even bother asking it a question. You know it can’t talk,” Tasia said with a roll of her eyes, as she knelt down and stole a katana from one of the slain guardsmen. His helmet had been torn off, and his skin left pale and frostbitten. 

**”Have a nice day.”**

The cybernetic assassin stood upright, watching its fellow Black Dragon passively, without thought or judgement. Thanks to their efforts upon “liberating” it from a Special Forces tech vault, the last remnant of the Cyber Lin Kuei had been brought back online and reprogrammed to serve their needs; a perfect tool with which to enact their mercenary work. More deadly than the dawn, and more silent than the night, as it had been in life. 

LK-520 was here to save the day. 

But their mission was not yet complete. With Hotaru and his fellow governors away, awaiting Havik’s impending execution, it would be all too easy for the group to break into Seido’s largest museum and take what they had been hired, all this time, to steal. 

The cyborg was more than capable of performing the infiltration, as Jarek, Tasia and Tremor kept the Seidan guards busy. The Black Dragon were worth their weight in gold, and their current benefactor had been all too generous. And for what?

One exhibit in particular. The oldest relic in all of Seido. A surviving work of art from the forgotten era of chaos that had, regrettably, consumed the orderrealm millenia ago. Blue glass, in the shape of a square, and rimmed with black steel. Had the cyber ninja still possessed a sense of touch, it would have felt cool, even to its icy fingers. 

It did not hesitate, and it did not falter. It froze any guardsmen who stood in its way with an absolute zero cannon installed in its chest, fueled by its own cryomancer powers. The puppeteered corpse walked to the center of the museum chamber, smashed the glass case, and took its quarry in hand. 

By the time it left, Tremor had already secured a path to freedom. And within the hour, the four figures were breathing Earthrealm air at the other end of the Seidan gateway. 

“Have I ever mentioned how much I love Guatemala?” Trevor bellowed, laughing with hearty joy as he held his arms out and embraced his newfound freedom. 

“You have, actually. But I must admit, it is a welcome sight,” Tasia said with a small, satisfied smile. It was rare that a plan went off without a hitch, and yet here they were. 

And here, too, was their employer. Standing with his feet in the grass, and his face turned to the wind. Silver hair blew gently in the breeze, and blank, pupil-less eyes seemed almost at peace. Almost. 

“You have succeeded?” The thunder god asked gruffly, not bothering to spare the merry band of mercenaries so much as a glance. They meant so little to him. Merely pawns on the chess board. Their failure would have been a nuisance, but not so massive a failure as to shift the game out of his favor. And with their success, he was one step closer to a decisive victory. 

LK-520 held out the glass icon, and Raiden nodded stiffly. He took the artifact from the reprogrammed cyborg and marveled at it. At the power that radiated from it. It practically buzzed against his fingertips, alive with the energy of another world. It felt as Seido did, it hummed with the same mystical frequency, imperceptible to normal humans, but so painfully clear to a deity like him. 

He handed it off to the black-robed monk who accompanied him, and regarded LK-520 for a brief, parting moment. It was an ugly reminder of his past failures, of what _kindness_ had wrought. There was value in that, he thought. Something to hold on to, as proof that this, this new path he was taking, was the only way to protect the denizens of his realm. 

He would not watch any more champions die. Not now. Not ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you ever think about how Kuai Liang’s original, cyberized body is still out there? How it didn’t vanish just because he got brought back as a revenant, and then restored to life? Because I think about that a lot. 
> 
> I know the DLC for MKX says that the Cyber Sub-Zero body became Triborg, but tbh that doesn’t help the story I want to tell, so... The Black Dragon did a corpse theft and now they have a pet cryomancer.
> 
> Please kudos and comment!

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't forget to kudos and comment! I love hearing your feedback!


End file.
